An Angry Bird, a few stickers, and some home-made homework passes

It has been about a month and a half...and they are FINALLY starting to speak!

If you have read my blogs before, you will know I am talking about my students. My 7th grade classes were (and still are) painfully quiet, unless of course I am playing charades with them and acting like a complete fool. In that case they are rolling on the floor laughing. Hey, that's something isn't it?

The weeks have passed, and I have to stop a second and give myself a pat on the back. I have been killing myself trying to think of ways to get the students to participate in class, and I think I have started to find it. I wish I knew that all it took was an angry bird, a few stickers and homemade homework passes!

The second week of school I was in Ximen, which is a market where they sell almost everything. I found a little red Angry Bird, and immediately realized THAT was what I needed in my classroom.

I throw the Angry Bird to the students who have their hands raised. It helped a little bit with their willingness to participate, but I wasn't happy yet. There was something else I needed to do...so I went back to the drawing board. I walked through the stationary store by my house one night, hoping to find an idea from something I saw. Right as I thought it was hopeless, I saw the stickers. BINGO!

I bought about 9,000 little smiley face stickers; half of them are blue and the other half are pink. Whenever a student does their homework (which is all the time) they get a blue sticker. This is a way to get the kids who are shy started with some stickers. Then throughout class, I write down the names of the students who raise their hand and participate on the board. Each student has to participate more than once (but sometimes I bend the rules for the shyer ones!)

Each class usually ends with a game, like BINGO or something. The winner(s) receive an additional sticker. So, in reality a student could potentially get 3 stickers a day. I tell them that for the first round, they have to get 10 stickers to get a homework pass. When I announced the homework pass, they were like, "WOW!" and literally could not believe I would actually allow them to not do their homework!

Okay...so maybe I have something here.


Was I right or what? My class went from 1 or 2 kids raising their hands, to kids jumping out of their seat for me to call on them and throw them the Angry Bird. I actually have to pick kids, and that part is hard. Take a look at this!

Is my job done yet...ABSOLUTELY NOT. I still see kids without their hands up, but I have to say the ones that do have their hands up certainly seem to REALLY want to be called on! At least I know it is not fake! I am pretty excited.

A few thoughts on this whole process:

1) When I first started rewarding the stickers at the beginning of class as I did homework checks, I realized that it took quite a bit of time. I forgot for a moment that I have about 55 kids in one class. I have since then, started giving the kids a game or exercise that they can do while I complete the homework check - maybe a word search or a word scramble. I am also teaching them how to crack coded messages, which they L-O-V-E.

2) I think I may actually stop using the stickers, and find myself a stamp. It would be a lot faster. I waste a lot of precious time peeling off the stickers and putting them onto the students' index cards. However, that will be a while because I did buy around 9,000 stickers!

So...I am getting there! My kids are starting to open up and participate, and I couldn't be happier.