spirited.
In an effort to maintain a safe environment, I have been playing around with whole brain teaching. It's been a while. I'm not going to say it's turned my rascally friends into perfect angels... but, there have been some improvements.
On with it.... the topic of this post is "The Game". The Game is a daily behavior activity. Each day, the kids play 'against' me. But really, its pretty win-win. You see, all day long, when they are on task, doing the right thing, etc. etc. they earn a point for the student team. And if they are not following the rules or what-not, they earn me a point. We play for some kind of daily reward. If they win, they get the reward, and if not, I get extra teaching time. I tell them all the time, I'd rather THEY win. Of course! Because if they win, I actually got that extra teaching time all through the day.
Some of the rewards we play for are: free draw, chit-chat time, You-Tube video (like 'funniest babies', Charlie Bit My Finger, etc.), extra recess, games and puzzles. I try to change it up regularly.
How do we play? Each time I see some kind of action or behavior I want to see more of, I mark a point on the students' side (the happy face side), and they get a 1 second party. They say "Oh Ya!" - each time I see a behavior I don't want to see, I mark a point on my side (the sad face side). They get a 1 second pity party and say "awww."
Simple enough, right?
Well, sometimes I forget, or sometimes we get distracted, or sometimes behavior is 10 kinds of wrong and a sad-face point doesn't quite cut it.
But, when I commit and they try, we all have a better day of it.
Try it out and tell me how it goes for you!
