Team points, spent by the team

I teach 24 forty-minute periods a week, and a new class of 16 to 22 students arrives at the door every time. With that much contact, routine has to carry most of the load.

The system

Points are awarded to teams for team behavior, never to individuals. Rule-breaking is handled the other way: a strike belongs only to the student who broke the rule, and helping a teammate never costs the helper a strike. When a team has earned points, the members decide together how to spend them. The design draws on Kagan's cooperative learning structures, and students sit in groups of four.

That makes it different from individual token systems such as ClassDojo. A student cannot cash in alone, so a teammate's behavior becomes the team's problem, and the pressure to fix it comes from peers and not from me. The mechanism rewards group cohesion and does not set students against each other.

The rules

Ten rules, posted in English and Korean. I explain the small wording differences between the two versions to students myself. The motto is Respect, Focus, Learn, and the last line on the poster is "Discipline yourself so no one else has to."

1. No standing up without permission.
2. Stay on task, and don't disrupt the learning process.
3. Be in the room before the bell ends.
4. No politics or religious comments.
5. No bad words, teasing, or being mean.
6. No running or rough play in the hallway.
7. No touching others without permission.
8. Raise your hand before speaking.
9. Be on time. Be in the room when the bell rings.
10. English only.

Strikes and blue cards

• A strike is a warning. It resets every class.
• Three strikes in one class is a blue card. That number may change depending on how the class behaves. Starred rules can lead to a blue card or more, depending on the situation.
• Four disruptive strikes means the student is asked to leave. This is a new policy for disruptive behavior, added in October 2026, and I explain it to students directly.
• Blue cards count toward a school-wide total. As that total grows it triggers further steps, such as a conversation with school management or a counselor, or a parent meeting with the principal.
• A blue card can be removed. After a clean class with no strikes, a student who tells me at the end of class gets one blue card removed.

Speaking up about a strike. A student gets 10 to 15 seconds, once. Arguing past that disrupts the class. I ask for more than "I didn't do it": a detail, a witness, or a logical reason. A student who needs longer can come to me at break or speak to me privately at a good moment in class. I tell students "I believe what I see," so if I saw it myself, the strike stands.

Daily routines

Start of class

Every desk needs a sharpened pencil, an eraser, and a red pen or equivalent. A team with all of its desks ready within the first 30 seconds earns a team point. The first team ready holds a stuffed animal, the snuggle buddy, and shares it as a group. It takes no class time and does not disrupt anything. The class also opens with a dad joke, a riddle, or a word puzzle.

Being on time

Students must be in the room before the bell ends. Otherwise they are late and get a strike. There is no separate grace-period timer.

Break time

Break is for water, the bathroom, the nurse, preparing for class, cleaning up, and talking to teachers. Students relax only after those are done, if there is time. Break is not playtime, and that rule does not change.

Dividers

Test dividers are numbered and checked three times: by the class before, by me at the end of that class, and by the student before the test. After each test, every student shows me their divider one at a time. Everyone leaves when all are checked.

The "Needs more Care" stamp

A student who did not do the work on a task gets the stamp and redoes the task alone, with no team help and no copying, while the others play a game.

When a teammate is off task

Students help the teammate in one of five ways: help them, point to their book, respond in English, ask the teammate to quiz them, or raise a hand and let me know.

Earning and spending team points

Points come from good answers, jokes, helpful comments, and good behavior. Helping a teammate always counts. Teams spend points on candy, stickers, and games, and can pool them for a game day that the class plans together.

End of class

Class ends with a silent line. No one leaves until the class is quiet.

The posters

The rules and the policies each exist as a poster in English and in Korean. Click an image to open it full size, or download all four as a PDF.

The classroom culture

My classroom is casual but strict. The strictness comes from consistent routines, and not from rigid control. Students rotate through my room all day, so the routines have to be easy to learn and the same for every class.

Supporting students who struggle to stay on task

I adjust in response to what I see: attention span, task completion, and whether a student connects an action to its consequence. This is observation, not clinical assessment. I am not a diagnostician, and I do not treat it as one.

Tools around it

Ribbon Overlay, a desktop tool I directed Claude to build, tracks team scores over long stretches and runs over ebooks and slides. Full details and a live demo are on the My Creations page. I also keep a personal lesson planner, the Interactive Calendar, that accounts for holidays, the school schedule, the testing calendar, special classes, and regular classes at the same time.