Miss Michelle Rico has implemented a token economy in the K-3 LJA classroom. This is one of the most commonly used behavior management interventions.

A token economy involves reinforcing desired behaviors identified by Miss Rico. These behaviors include such things as students sitting quietly in their seats during class, raising their hand instead of interrupting the teacher, and completing the week’s assignments. Miss Rico has identified ten major appropriate behaviors and has a chart listing these behaviors.

Students are given a token, daily, as a reinforcement for doing their job as an exemplary student. Periodically the students can exchange their token for small toys, healthy snacks, or special privileges.

A token program is often compared to a national economic system in which we work for money, which has no value in of itself, but later can be exchanged for items and activities that are valuable to us. Some children refuse to use their tokens and would rather hang on to their tokens for an exchange at another time, or to just have more tokens than anyone else!

Learn more about token economies at: http:// vkc.mc.vanderbilt.edu/assets/files/tipsheets/ tokeneconomytips.pdf

Susan Zimmermann