You know when it's time to change things up because the kids aren't responding like they used to in the beginning. That happened this week, like it usually does. This group of 4th and 5th graders are great, but they are also normal kids three and a half weeks away from Christmas break! It was time to "tweek" the scoreboard to get that same feeling we had back in September. With one small adjustment, it was all brand new.
We needed some extra practice with Rule 1 so that became our focus for this week. I wrote it under the Scoreboard so that they knew that this was the focus...and then...I revealed the big finish! I divided the Scoreboard in two parts, so that now there was a boys section and a girls section. The score is kept the same way, I'm just watching now for two groups. I would say "Class" and they would say "Yes" but there was some fidgeting going on by a few boys in the back, sad face mark followed by a groan. But the girls did it right, so they got the happy face and a cheer! That was all it took for them to see how this worked. It was on!
Of course the game was close all day and I still had some small rule breakers, but it was better. You see, it doesn't take a lot to refocus kids. Just the slightest tweek will do. Stay tuned for more tweeks to the scoreboard game as the year progresses! If you can't wait, you can check out the archived video library on the front page of wholebrainteaching.com and watch the Scoreboard video for more ideas.
