At Big Man's school last year (K in a GT school) they had a system that seemed to work really well - it sound similar to your second system - "best" was a rainbow card, and then subsequent infractions moved colors down to green, yellow, organge and red. To be frank, i don't remember exactly what happened at the lower levels, but i only recall there being one red (which made a big impact on big man) with one of his classmates - after a particularly bad tantrum i believe, when he was sent to the head-of-school's office.
On the positive side, at the end of each day each child colored a piece of paper with whatever color of card they had, at the end of the week if they had all rainbows or rainbow and no more than 1 (or 2?) greens they got a trip to the treasure box (huge deal for Big Man!) - they also bring it home as a sort of "report card" which Big Man was always proud to display
. In addition, during each day they got stickers for particularly good behaviour (listening well, helping, etc.) on a "sticker holder" (usually some 5x5 sized piece of paper- in the shape of a fish tank, gum ball machine, etc.). At the end of the month, the top two with the most stickers got an extra something from the treasure box.
What i really liked about this was the emphasis on the positive. I also heard (and found) that the kids made a big deal of keeping their rainbow cards and encouraged eachother if one of them got "demoted" at any point. They WANTED their friends to be in green / rainbow territory, and would help eachother out to get back on the "right track".
I think in orange/red territory there was some recess loss, but again, i, thankfully, had no personal experience with that, and it was my understanding that it didn't happen too much, in part b/c of the positive environment in the class and how they helped eachother.
I know that changes somewhat in 1st grade + (less trips to the treasure box, for one), but since we will have a new teacher
we don't know how it will all play out.
Wow, i write long posts... sorry about that!
