Motivating students to follow the rules and stay in line by threatening to take away the holiday party or requiring student to “earn” the holiday party is common in many classrooms. Teachers who choose to do this will often find themselves repeating the threat each time the students disobey. This is not actually an effective means of getting students to obey, as demonstrated by the needed repetition of the threats.
Why Threaten the Holiday Party?
Teachers like to threaten the holiday party because it is a huge motivation for many students. The holiday party is a high interest or high value activity that students are willing to do anything in order to receive it. Finding a high value reward to motivate students is a very effective method of classroom management.
Why NOT Threaten the Holiday Party?
The problem with threatening to take away the holiday party is that very often the teacher is not actually willing to follow through on the threat. Children are smart and will quickly realize that the more times the threat is repeated, the less likely the teacher is to actually follow through. In fact, the repeated threats is very close to pleading with students to obey.
Additionally, if the teacher is actually willing to follow through and take away the holiday party, it means that even those students who were obeying will miss out. The only way to make this type of threat work is to routinely have disobedient students required to sit out (of recess, a party, a special class game, etc.) and make this type of discipline a recognized routine in the classroom.
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