Mastery credits are designed to leverage “discretionary effort” from boys to try and have them push themselves achieve higher in classroom work. They are optional, but if made appealing, they have boys seeking the “testosterone blast” they get from setting a challenging goal and achieving it. As described in the book the mastery credit must demonstrate creative and interesting practical applications of what was learned during the task.

This can be very open ended and appeal to the students own natural gifts. Examples could be:

• Video-game outline/creation
• Songs/rap
• short, entertaining video
• a presentation to the class or other students / parents/ community
• drawing a picture that is displayed
• an article / interview with the school paper or local community media
• The more public the work is , the better in many cases.

In terms of representing success, there are some neat online tools that can be accessed below:

• This one is for parents, but it could be used easily by teachers: http://www.kidpointz.com

• Class Dojo is another online tool that targets classroom behavior but could also be used in to record mastery credits: http://www.classdojo.com