Market Day at SLP

My school has an interesting way of motivating students that I really enjoy. Our students work hard to do homework, do well on quizzes and raise their hands in class in order to earn stamps. Once collecting 60 stamps the students can trade it in for an SLP "dollar" or "euro" (in the SLP system the exchange rate between the dollar and euro are even. A few smart students tried to get away with buying more with fewer euros because they know the real exchange rate is better. That didn't fly with me...)
Every few months we cancel classes and host "Market Day". Market day is a day of games, shopping and movies. Here they have an opportunity to spend the money they earned over the previous months. While the activities change from market day to market day, our market day last week consisted of 4 rooms. Movie (Night at the Museum 2), Market, Cafe and Golden Bell.


I was mostly working in the market this time. They had an interesting twist to the market this time as well. This time they asked students to bring in used toys and books to sell as well. When I first heard this I was worried they were trying to cheat the kids out of getting some cool (new) stationary, but what actually happened though was they got all the usual things, plus sold used things as well. It worked well. The kids loved getting "new" books and some of the used toys were cool enough (and cheap enough in SLP dollars) to entice kids to buy them.

This time they had a cafe which was separate from the market. They went all out and even got ddeokbokki (rice cakes in a spicy sauce) for the kids to purchase. The teachers also went wild for the ddeokbokki and we were all stopping by all day to pick up some more throughout the day.


I didn't watch the Golden Bell game, but I know it was based on a TV quiz show and they used English questions based on what the kids had been studying for the last few months.

Anyway, the kids all really liked it and it was a nice break from teaching for two days. Our next event will be Halloween!