“Token Boards” are examples of Token Economy Reinforcement Systems. Teachers and parents can use token boards to teach and increase specific skills or behaviors, and task completion of students. A student receives a “token” for completing tasks, skills, or behaving in an appropriate way. The tokens and the rewards earned after completing a token board reinforce these skills! We know that if we want to see an increase in specific skills and behaviors, we must reinforce them with positive reinforcement.
Parents and teachers make token boards out of arbitrary items such as stars, tokens, tickets, stickers, points, sticks, or anything else you can get creative with! They can be as fancy or as simple as you want. To use a token board, present the child with the board and Following the occurrence of specific skills and behaviors you are teaching, give the student the “token”. When enough tokens are earned, they can be exchanged for preferred items and activities!
Successful token board implementation ultimately increases motivation for appropriate behaviors and to perform new skills. It also decreases the motivation for inappropriate and off-task behaviors.
Making Token Boards/Economies Effective
- Provide the “tokens” immediately after the specific skills and behaviors you want to increase and pair it with praise.
- Make sure what the student is working for is actually reinforcing! If those items and activities are available outside of the system, it will not be motivating enough to work for them.
- For students who are new to token boards, start with only needing to earn 1 token at a time, then slowly increase to 3, 5, even 10 tokens at a time before earning their preferred item or activity. This is what teaches the student what the tokens actually mean!
- Ensure success!!! Stay at the number of tokens a student is required to earn that they are successful at! Requiring “too much too soon” will make the whole system fall apart. It is ok! Slowly slowly increase the requirement as long as the student stays successful.
The benefits of Token Boards/Economies
- A student receives multiple reinforcers (the tokens themselves become reinforcers!) for desirable behavior without making the student satiated on the preferred items and activities.
- It is a simple way to provide a student a structure and visual schedule of when they will access their items and activities reinforcers
- Allows more immediacy of reinforcement because the tokens are always available.
- It allows for flexibility because you can reinforce multiple skills and behaviors all within the same system
- Students ultimately learn that good things happen when they engage in appropriate behaviors and learn new skills! You won’t always have to use a token board forever.