Student Teaching Week 4: The "Speak Week" Experience

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If you read my blog from last week, you would know that I have been challenged this semester with motivating my freshman class. Over the past two weeks, I have spent a lot of time trying to determine what I can do to create a productive environment. Last weekend, I designed and decided to implement what I call "Speak Week", not quite the same as "Greek Week." Students were split from their talkative buddies and placed into teams. These teams were given the chance to compete at the beginning of class each day for 10 minutes. Scores were tallied and the winning teams were allowed to have a pizza party in friday's study period.

This competition drastically helped classroom management because teams would loose points for misbehavior. I feel that this has helped a lot with the class rapport. The students really enjoyed the competition and activities in general. But were do I go from here? I know for a fact that I need to keep providing activities that allows students to get up and moving. I also need to wean them off of the pizza prize. They will finish presenting their prepared speeches this week and begin a livestock judging unit.

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Looking into this next week, I need to keep it fun and engaging while being stern with those students who haven't put the work in on their speech. I have kids with tons of potential that put forth little effort and kids with less potential that work their hearts out. As an educator, I want all my students to reach their full potential. I have to continue learning through experimentation on how to motivate my students best.