Stickers as Motivational Tool

It's amazing to me how kids and students of all ages are motivated by stickers.  At a young age kids are motivated by sticker charts.  Parents often create a sticker chart where the child gets to put a sticker on the chart for completing a task such as helping set the dinner table, cleaning the toy/bedroom, etc.  So stickers work as a great motivational tool for young children.  Don't, however, eliminate stickers as a motivational tool for older students.

I teach physics and astronomy to 11th and 12th grade high school students.  For the last couple of years I've used stickers in my astronomy classes and started using stickers in my physics classes to encourage students to speak up and ask questions.  I'm a bit surprised at how well students have responded to this.  I was a little afraid that my high school students would think that stickers are silly.  The exact opposite was true.  My students are very eager to receive stickers and many have the goal of receiving the entire set of stickers by the end of the semester!  They'll even fight for each other to get stickers by claiming that a question another student asked was "sticker worthy".  I'm very impressed.  Below are a couple of pictures I took of a few of the stickers I hand out in my physics stickers.

Some of the stickers I get free through a teaching workshop I went to in the past.  Others I get from Zazzle.  Zazzle has a huge collection of stickers over a wide range of topics/subjects.  If you're having trouble motivating your child, try stickers.  You might be surprised!