If your learners can understand the concept of delayed reward, then a tiered reinforcement scheme can add to the fun and keep things interesting.

You should always be generous with tags during the TAGteach part of a session. The more tags the learners earn the better. In some cases they may get 100 tags in one session. It is not feasible to give a bead or a sticker for every tag in such cases. You need to find a way to let them accumulate tags without having to worry about them getting too many and overwhelming the tangible reward system. We will give some examples that hopefully will get you thinking about other ways to do this. Our on-line TAGteach Yahoo discussion group is a great source of ideas where learners keep track of their tags and trade them in for tangible reinforcers which in turn can be traded in for a higher value reinforcer.

Using a tagulator to keep track of tags so that they can be traded for a tangible reinforcer works well.

Here is a video showing how we introduced a tagulator to a child who was previously getting 1 candy for every tag. With the tagulator he was getting 1 candy for every 10 tags and he was quite happy about that!

Here is an example of a pizza party tiered reinforcement scheme with 4 tiers.

In tier 1 the learners earn components of a craft pizza. Every 20 tags earns some pieces of the pizza. After everyone has their crust and 5 of each of the other components they can have some time to glue their pizza together. This will take 320 tags for each person and you can require even more if you want. Once everyone has their pizzas completed the whole group gets to have a pizza party during a normal lesson period.

Here is an example of a tag record card. The soccer players put a stamp with a stamping marker on the card for every 10 tags. When a whole row is completed the player gets a soccer patch or other prize. When all players have completed their cards the group gets an activity, such as playing a game against the parents rather than doing drills.

Sometimes kids cheat on these cards or other tag records. Just ignore this and it will go away or the other kids will address it. If some kids are behind and not getting as many tags, encourage cooperation by allowing them to go with a friend and do something easy to allow them to catch up. If you are giving out prizes at the end of a row for example, be sure to arrange it so that everyone manages to get enough tags to fill their row. Watch the video below that shows young soccer players filling in their cards and getting their primary reinforcers.

Here are some other examples of tiered reinforcement schemes. In the first example, the first tier is to pull down all the beads on a tagulator, one bead for each tag. When the tagulator beads are all pulled down, the learner puts a sticker on a chart and then starts again with the tagulator. When they have pulled down all the beads again they get another sticker. This continues until the chart is full of stickers. This is the second tier. When the chart is full the learner gets to choose a prize from the treasure box. This is the third tier. Sometimes there may be only two tiers. For example, every time someone in the class gets a tag they can put a ticket in a jar. When the jar is full of tickets the class gets to choose a story for the teacher to read aloud.