Reward trips are often used by schools as a way of recognising student achievements. Often, schools will spend a lot of time and energy dealing with negative behaviour but it is also important to think of the rewards for positive behaviour.
The nature of the “reward” means this cannot be every student, but not every student in your school gets a detention or punishment every day and not every student gets a space on a reward trip.
Reward trips allow us to at least focus on the positive, even though there is an implied negative for those who don’t get the invitation. Life presents us with lots of examples of selection, but ensuring the selection criteria for the trip are clear and communicated well is vital in setting up a reward trip. Students should not feel like they are playing the lottery, so the probability of getting a space needs to be high. That is why large venues such as Alton Towers cater well for reward visits.
Over the past five years, I have organised popular reward trips to Alton Towers, attending either the annual Scarefest or fireworks events in October and November, and taking between 200 and 400 students on each visit (about 400 to 800 invitations are sent, so around half the students decide to attend).
These were weekend visits, run outside of school time, open to all students who met the criteria to attend. While there were no formal learning objectives for the visit, taking students on a memorable shared experience with their friends and staff does create a positive environment back in school. Who would want to miss out on the opportunity of seeing their teachers scared on a ride?
These trips can also help develop children’s personal and social skills, such as leadership, working together and time management.
Variety of trips
It’s a good idea to plan a variety of reward trips over the year to cater for different students. You can use the school council to come up with ideas for trips that would appeal to students at your school. It is important to recognise the different age ranges within your setting and also to take advantage of any free opportunities that may come along.
Our visits have included the cinema (for the release of Star Wars), ice skating, bowling and Alton Towers.
Having a number of reward trips lined up also helps in dealing with disappointment from students and parents who weren’t able to attend a particular event as they can focus on the next opportunity. The most common question I have been asked is “Why has my child not been selected when another child has?” (usually backed up with an example of a student who was selected, who the parent asking the question feels should not be on the trip). It is important to focus on their child and the reasons they did not meet the criteria on this occasion. These conversations can be useful if refocused on school and any underlying issues are backed up with student data.
You may be able to subsidise the trip, but usually, you’ll need to ask parents for some form of contribution. School group tickets to Alton Towers are a lot cheaper than the gate price, so even with coaches added to the cost, reward trips are still seen as good value for money by parents. We also tend to offer further discounts or free spaces for pupil premium students and other identified students (such as families who may have more than one child attending).
As a member of staff on a reward trip, it can be enjoyable and hard work. We had a rota of staff based at one location who looked after any issues, allowing other staff time to go off and enjoy the rides. Splitting the time evenly for staff made it easier to get volunteers to go.
The reward trip creates something positive to talk about in lessons and re-focuses students on positive behaviour. It also caters well to the forgotten pupils in the middle, who are neither the best nor the worst behaved, but should meet the requirement for the trip.
Going on a visit when the aim is to have fun is one of the most rewarding things for a teacher, too. Very few students ever thanked me for my lesson on migration (no idea why not - it included a card sort), but many thanked me for taking them on reward visits.
As pressure on students in schools increases we need to creative, positive memories for students and reward trips go a long way to achieving this.
Andrew Caffrey is a former assistant headteacher at The Streetly Academy in Sutton Coldfield and is now regional director (UK) at EdTechTeam
