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Friday, March 21, 2014

Keeping Students Motivated


How do you stay motivated throughout the week?  A coffee from Starbucks?  Happy hour after school?  Weekend retail therapy? 

 Staying motivated isn’t easy.  In fact, it’s downright difficult, and keeping students motivated is no small task.  Throughout the years, we have tried many traditional reinforcers: sticker charts, prize boxes, speech bucks, parties, positive emails to parents, positive office referrals, etc.   You get the picture, right?

We have found that by allowing students a simple 3-5 minutes 1x/week adds excitement all week long.   Students walk into our room on Monday, already making plans for Friday’s….JUST DANCE!  Yes, I’m sure many of you have tried or are using this as a reinforcer, too!  Isn’t it great?  It’s free.  It’s exercise.  It gets you moving, (and really, the students get a kick out of watching you dance).  And best of all?  They love it!  Of course, participating comes with stipulations: arriving on time, bringing materials to sessions, and doing their best work.  These stipulations are just their norm now. 

Even with our best-laid plans, we often find ourselves scrambling when the students announce that it’s time for Just Dance.  It seems that we always forget to pre-screen songs for those sneaky, inappropriate lyrics.  No worries!  We have created a list of Just Dance songs and their links so that you are just one click away (or maybe two) from  a last minute school-appropriate reinforcer!  This is only a list of our top 15 with songs with edited lyrics.  Please feel free to add more in the comment section!

TOP 15
Firework - Katy Perry
Ghostbusters
Hey Ya - Outkast 


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