Over at our Be The Difference blog, my colleague Diane is running her Gobble, Gobble Giveaway—contribute an idea that saves time during the school day and be entered for a chance to win a book of your choice from The Mailbox.
Before you go rushing over to Diane’s blog (and I encourage you to do so, but wait a sec), double your chances to win a book from The Mailbox by entering my It’s Curtains for Tom Turkey Giveaway! Simply contribute an idea for a competition with other classes that also teaches an important skill or lesson (recycling and graphing, for example). Nothing fancy, just fun!
A good enough idea could even make its way into The Mailbox magazine; then you get the added bonus of a $20 gift certificate from The Mailbox!
Diane’s Be The Difference blog has a much larger readership. Can we get more comments here? If so, I’ll pick a second winner. So put on those thinking caps and enter today by leaving an idea in the comments!
PS – Submit your comments by midnight, November 19, 2012, to be eligible!
Follow Up – Congratulations to Joanne, our randomly-selected winner. And a big thanks to all of you for submitting your ideas! Be on the lookout for my next giveaway coming soon!
One of the ideas that I’ve always found works is an interclass charity competition. Students are encouraged to, for example, bring in quarters for the Children’s Hospital, or cans of food for the food bank. The prize for the winning class is a party. There are so many wonderful things about a competition like this. Kids learn about needs in the community and the importance of giving back, and also learn mathematical skills as they count the money, weigh the pounds of food collected, create bar graphs to visualize who is in the lead, use line graphs to follow the weekly contributions made by each class, and calculate the percent their class has contributed to the overall total. how much of the total collected has
Competition works great when trying to motivate readers. Having a friendly competition between grades is a great way to get everyone reading, especially when the principal gets involved in promoting it.
A favorite activity is to collect food for the local food pantry, and then have the students look at the nutritional values of the products, and determine their health benefits. A great way to help the community, but also to open students’ eyes to what is really good for them. We then plan menus and alternatives to some of the things that may have been donated (lots of canned goods, for example). This project can be a real eye opener for students and their families, and it can be incorporated into Thanksgiving or christmas time traditions.
My class is participating in the Scholastic PAWS for Reading where they read for 20 minutes daily and log in their minutes. It is the Cats vs. the Dogs, and the winner in my classroom will get to eat lunch in the classroom and play games. Both teams are winners though because Scholastic is donating one book for every 20 minutes logged in. So far over 1,000,000 books have been donated!
Our entire school participates in a positive behavior plan. We give 3R tickets for positive behaviors in 3 categories: Respect, Responsible, and Ready to Learn. Even though it is school wide, we have an additional friendly competition within our pod of classes.When students receive a 3R ticket they contribute it to a class collection-if students receive one from another teacher it counts twice- at the end of the week they are counted and the class with most earns the prize (which is also drawn from the prize jar-we created the prizes before school started for example take one of the other classes computer lab time, get one of the other classes recess in addition to their own-just one day, No HW night)we then take all of the tickets and dump them into the school wide drawing and they have the opportunity for individual recognition (name announced on our in school television network, picture placed on the Star Board, and draw a prize from the box. Needless to say, we have minimal behavior issues, missing assignments,or bullying.Instead we have a community of children who demonstrate respect for themselves and others, they come to school ready to learn and they take responsibility for themselves. I submit this because I feel that teaching students the necessary social skills to be successful adults and good citizens through their actions is priceless.
This year, our classes have a friendly competition associated with our “Can-Can Food Drive.” Of course, the main purpose is to help feed needy families, but the students also get a kick out of being the class with the most donations…