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My Experience
Some teachers go back and forth about if they should offer extra credit. This has been a topic that I have wrestled with over the past few years. I finally caved in and decided to offer extra credit.
There are times when I offer extra credit that is challenging and there are times when I offer it for doing something simple. I try a variety of options because some students crave challenges and some do not do as well with them.
For purposes of this post, the focus in on extra credit where the students are required to put forth energy to earn the points.
Concrete Ideas
One way to earn weekly extra credit in my class is to complete an analogy sheet. I purchased Analogy Challenges, and each week I use one of the pages for extra credit. The words are challenging which means that they need to look up quite a few of the words. Then they must determine the relationships between the words. There are different levels for grades K-12.
I give them the analogy page on a Monday (Tuesday if there is no school on Monday), and it is due on that Friday (Thursday if there is no school on Friday) by the end of the school day. The students can turn them in any time during the week. I offer extra credit for doing the work correctly. I let them know that they can also get even more points.
What I do is separate the entries by class. Then I let them know that I will randomly pull one paper from each class. That student will earn a few extra points. This is why I tell the students that when they do the extra credit, it would be best not to share their answers with their classmates. I explain that if they do all the work but their classmate ends up with the extra points then they would be upset. Hopefully the students will think about sharing their work before they allow someone else to take credit for their work and ultimately be rewarded.
