Motivating Students

Any substitute teacher can tell you, motivating students who do not know you can be really tricky. I have been building a bag of tricks over the last few months.

-Music during silent reading. I like to play Trace Bundy on Pandora - it brings up calm and lyric-less acoustic guitar. If you are planning on playing Pandora in class, have found that its worth it to pay to not have commercials.

-Stickers! They are amazing motivation for kids in kindergarten through 8th grade (its most amazing to see this work in the upper grades).

If you give out stickers as students are working it shows them you care about what they are doing.

-Create a "I was reading!" or "I was writing!" list. As students are silently reading I walk around the room, quietly thank students for being on task and ask them to sign their name. I always leave the list for their classroom teacher.

Tried and true: students love it when you notice the postive things they do.

-Wiggle breaks! If you tube is not blocked in your classroom, project or put on the SMART board the Cha Cha Slide or Just Dance.

-Tumble Books (see my previous post about how great these are).

-In very chatty classrooms I have a contest with the students. I post "Class" and "Teacher" on the board, where I tally points. I give them a count down: 3 seconds for voices off, 30 seconds to gather supplies and be ready for the next activity. If they are ready at the end of the count down they get the point, if not I get the point. At some designated point near the end of the day if they have more points than me they get a reward - typically a Tumble Book or a wiggle break.