Double It!

What do you do when a fantastic teaching opportunity lands in your lap? You run with it, boots and all. That’s exactly what happened when announced in a staff meeting that we were going to have a ‘Double It Week!’ where every Tokarewa Sticker that students got would be doubled for the entire week.

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If teachers observe students using the school values of Pride, Opportunity, Whanāu, Excellence and Respect three times in a day they receive a Tokarewa Sticker for showing POWER. These stickers are put into a booklet and rewards are given to celebrate when students receive a certain amount of stickers. In an earlier blog post Gwen Bowler has outlined how the Tokarewa Programme works. Paula Farquhar explained that she wanted to inject a "bit of oomph" into the giving out of stickers so students could receive rewards faster. Just what we needed to motivate a bit of enthusiasm into the dreary wet week we were going to have.

Doubling the Tokarewa Stickers fitted perfectly into our Mathematics Programme. Students kept a tally of how many stickers they were going to receive for the day and doubled it. They practiced their counting on strategies to work out how many more stickers were needed to receive a reward. The students made up word problems for each other to solve. This included calculating how many stickers they would get for the week if they got so many stickers each day.

Decisions needed to be made about what colour stickers the students wanted for their booklets. The different options they chose included all the same colour, halving the amount between two colours, creating a repeating pattern or having all of the colours. 

Room 13 thought Mrs Farquhar’s double it idea was brilliant. How do we let her know we loved it so much? How do we get her to do it again? 

It was time to practise our persuasive writing in the form of a letter. Persuasive writing is when the writer wants the reader to think in a certain way.

Dear Mrs Farquhar

I think you should do the double up week again because I got up to fifty stickers. That made me feel so proud.

 

Dear Mrs Farquhar

I think your idea to double the Tokarewa Stickers was amazing. I think you should do it again because it was really fun. I like to put the stickers in the Tokarewa Book.

Dear Mrs Farquhar

I think your idea to double the Tokarewa Stickers was a great idea. I think you should do this again because I got to forty four stickers in my Tokarewa Book today. I only need six more to get to fifty.

Dear Mrs Farquhar

I think your idea to double the Tokarewa Stickers was brilliant. I think you should do this again because it was fantastic. I doubled two stickers and it made four stickers so I got to put four stickers in my book.

Dear Mrs Farquhar

I think your idea to double the Tokarewa Stickers was amazing. It was super cool like a swing going up into the sky. It was super fun like making a sock puppet. Can we please do this again because it’s so fun getting up to fifty stickers?

We have got our fingers crossed that Mrs Farquhar will think of another awesome idea soon.
We have got our fingers crossed that Mrs Farquhar will think of another awesome idea soon.

2024 Jackson

Leanne Jackson

I have a long history of being part of the education world. My experiences include being a parent, grandparent, and teacher. I have had training in both Early Childhood and Primary School.

I have been working at Wairakei Primary School since 2014 and I am teaching in the junior school. I have a strong belief that all children are capable learners and I am passionate about developing learning programmes that are creative, challenging, authentic and fun with my team. I nurture the children’s curiosity while encouraging them to become self- motivated and independent learners who understand what they are learning and why they are learning it.

I enjoy working in the supportive learning community of Wairakei Primary School where children, families and teachers learn and grow together.

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