- Help
- Rewards
Points
Spark’s Points system helps motivate students by rewarding positive academic behaviors. Teachers award points when students complete assignments, make progress on goals, or submit high-quality work. Students can then redeem their points for Rewards created by the school or their classroom teachers.
How Students Earn Points
When students submit an assignment or record progress on a goal, you can review their submission and award points as needed. Students can then redeem their earned points for rewards.
Submissions can have a built-in point value that is automatically awarded when the submission is approved, or you can adjust or award custom points when reviewing the submission.
Points can be earned for school-wide work, or within a classroom.
Where Teachers & Students Can View Point Balances
Teachers
School-Wide View
- Go to Rewards → Student Balances.
- View point totals for all students across the school.
- Click on a specific student to view more balance information.
Classroom/Pod View
- Go to a Classroom/Pod.
- Open the Activity & Rewards tab.
- Go to the Rewards & Balance section. You’ll see point balances for students in that specific group.
- Click on a specific student to view more balance information.
Students
Students can see their total points in the top-right corner of their Student Portal. Points from submissions that are still awaiting teacher review will be marked as “Pending.”
To view classroom-specific points, students can go to the Rewards page and choose the classroom.
Managing Point Balances
Awarding Points: Points are awarded when an assignment or goal submission is approved by the teacher. The assignment or goal submission may be awarded the pre-assigned points, or points can be customized in the submission modal.
Adjusting Points: To adjust or reset a student's point balance
- Navigate to the student’s balance:
- School-wide: Go to Rewards → Balances and select the student.
- Classroom-specific: Go to Classroom/Pod → Activity & Rewards → Rewards & Balance and select the student.
- Update the balance:
- Click Add Balance to add or subtract points.
- Click Set Balance to reset the student’s total points to a specific value.
Automatic Balance Updates: Spark automatically recalculates point totals based on all earned and redeemed points.
Redeeming Points for Rewards
Students can redeem rewards with the points they earn. To do so:
- Students browse available Rewards in their Portal.
- They “purchase” a Reward using their points.
- Spark deducts the points automatically from their balance.
- The teacher or admin fulfills the reward request.