It's Saturday, so it's time to link up with my BBB Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching for Spark Student Motivation! The weeks leading up to spring break were absolutely horrible with chattiness -- talk, talk, talk. I'm talking about the kind of talk when there shouldn't be talk. I know the kids were excited -- I was excited -- be we still had some learning to do! So I came up with this very simple, yet powerful, way to control all of the talking. I call it Beat the Teacher. It basically is a game of you versus the students, and who doesn't love a little friendly competition? The way it works is that when I need the class to quiet down, I start counting backwards from five: 5-4-3-2-1. Sometimes the count is quiet, sometimes loud. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes very slow. Either way, the students have to be listening... If I get to "1" and there is even one student talking, I get the tally point. If the entire class is quiet, they get the point. It is awesome to watch the students try to quiet each other down. Points accumulate through the day (or week) As you can see from our score above, I lost this day. :) (But did I really???) The prize is simply bragging rights....Or it could be a simple class incentive (brain break? extra 5 minutes of recess?) Either way, we are all winners! Before I go, I wanted to make sure that you knew about a wonderful fundraiser going on over at Tori's Teacher Tips. The blogger community has an amazing way of supporting one another, and Tori could definitely use our help right now. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the motivational ideas over at Joanne's blog. I hope to see you there! I also hope to see you back here tomorrow for my Sunday linky party, A Peek at My Week, and/or onThursday for Positive Thinking Thursday. Happy Saturday!!