This article will help you reward student participation and positive behavior by using the Minga Points feature. This guide will walk you through setting staff permissions, awarding points for engagement, and redeeming points for Rewards. By the end, you'll be able to foster a positive school culture and track student achievements with ease.
Permission Level Required: Owner | Manager | Points Manager
In this article:
How to use Points in your Minga: Minga's best practices for assigning points to foster student engagement.
Enable Staff Permissions for Point Management: Learn how to give teachers and staff the ability to manage and redeem points.
How to Assign Points to Individuals or Teams: Follow steps to reward specific students or groups for their positive actions.
How to Redeem Points for Rewards: See how to deduct points when a student uses them for rewards or items.
How to use Points in your Minga
Points can be awarded to students in several ways, including event check-ins, responding to Polls and Challenges in the home feed, and praise for good behavior.
Minga's Best Practices:
Align your rewards with school policies to ensure they reflect school-wide values and expectations. Common examples include "Leadership," "Acts of Kindness," and "Community Care" for praise rewards.
We suggest 1 point for each praise behavior to encourage positive conduct and make it easier for teachers and staff to reward students.
This gives all students the same chance at earning points, rather than it being dependent on the inclination of their individual teacher to award points.
Enable Staff Permissions for Point Management
You can give teachers and staff the ability to award and redeem points by adjusting your global settings. While Owners and Managers have these rights by default, you must manually enable them for other roles.
Step-by-step guide to Enabling Permissions for Teachers and Staff
Step-by-step guide to Enabling Permissions for Teachers and Staff
Navigate to the Points tab in your main navigation menu.
Click the Settings tab located at the top of the screen.
Toggle on Allow Teachers to manage points or Allow Staff to manage points to let them assign points.
Toggle on Allow Teachers to redeem points or Allow Staff to redeem points to let them process rewards.
How to Assign Points to an Individual or Team
You can award points to individuals or teams to recognize engagement in school activities like event check-ins, polls, or positive actions.
Step-by-step guide to Assigning Points
Step-by-step guide to Assigning Points
Go to My Tools on your dashboard.
Click the More actions button.
Select Manage Points from the available options.
Click Add Points under the Individuals or Teams tab.
Search for the recipient by name or filter by Group, Grade, or Role.
Select the number of Points (ranging from 0 to 20), enter a Reason, and select a Category.
Click Add to add the points to the Individual/Team.
How to Redeem Points for Rewards
You can redeem points when a student wants to "spend" their earned balance on school items or privileges.
Note: In order to redeem points for rewards you will need to toggle on Enable Rewards in your Points Settings, and toggle on Allow teachers to redeem points if you would like teachers to perform this workflow. Check out the article How to Create and Manage Student Rewards
Step-by step guide to Redeeming Points
Step-by step guide to Redeeming Points
Navigate to My Tools and click the More Actions button.
Select the Redeem option.
Search for and select the specific student's name.
Click the Redeem button.
Add the desired items to the digital cart from the Rewards drop-down menu.
Click Checkout to complete the redemption and update the student's balance.
Additional Features
Team Points Integration: When you award points to an individual student, those points automatically count toward any Teams that student is a member of.
Activity-Based Points: You can set specific point values (0, 1, 5, 10, or 20) for automated activities like responding to Polls or Challenges in the home feed.
FAQs
FAQs
How do I give teachers the ability to award points?
You can give teachers the ability to award points by navigating to Points > Settings and toggling on the Allow Teachers to manage points option.
Can I customize the reason why a student receives points?
Yes, you can customize the reason for points by typing a specific description in the Reason field when you are using the Add Points tool. This allows you to track specific behaviors like "Helping a peer" or "Campus cleanup."
Do points awarded to a student help their team?
An individual's points will count toward all Teams they are a part of automatically, ensuring that individual success contributes to group goals.
Can I remove points instead of redeeming them?
Yes, you can remove points by following the same steps outlined in the steps to Assign Points, by navigating to MyTools>More Actions> Manage Points> Remove Points. Here, you can remove points from an individual or from a Team however we do not recommend doing this in place of redeeming points as this can result in the individual or team having a negative points balance,