One of the first grade teachers said she was getting a TON of sloppy handwriting, so one day she randomly gave an "award" to a student with the neatest paper. She said everything in her room quickly changed! Students were suddenly taking their time and asking, "When do I get an award?"
So she started giving out weekly awards!
We loved this idea so much that we started using it in 5th grade too. We would showcase a bunch of random things --- A+ papers, great effort on a tough assignment, neat handwriting, a well organized paper, and so on. Each Friday we would take about five minutes to show the class who was receiving an award, and then those students could hang them on their lockers (or put them away if they chose to). I think this would also make a neat display to change out each week with maybe five students highlighted.
One thing to note - make sure you keep track of who has received your "award"! You want to showcase everyone in your class at some point!!
Here are a couple pictures of our VERY basic "awards".
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While you're here - please take a moment to go see the Teacher Feature on me in this week's Teacher 2 Teacher post!
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How do you motivate your students to do their best work?
~HoJo~
2 comments:
As a 5th grade teacher myself, I have to agree that handwriting can be one of the craziest things to deal with. In fact, this past year, some of the handwriting grew worse as the year progressed. I think I will try the award idea.....sounds great.
I also checked out your feature post.
Thanks
Donna
working5to9math.blogspot.com
I am nominating you for the Versatile Blogger award!
-Dani
A Place to Thrive
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