February 9th, the day after Disaster

As mentioned in my previous post, I saw that the behavior contracts on their own had lost the focus students' interest, and were no longer effective on their own.

I decided to add a class dollar competition. Like the other days, I let all the boys know what the behavior contracts were for, and said that they could still use them as a tool to motivate themselves, but that the competition would not be about the cards, but about who had the least times shouting out, based off my tracking talking.

I set the prize at five class dollars, which is standard for my competitions, but better than the one dollar rewards that are given frequently throughout the day. I also gave the information that if more than one boy tied at most quiet that both boys could receive the reward, so potentially, if no one shouted out, they all could receive the prize.

This was not entirely effective. It was very motivating for some of the boys, such as N, J, D, and G, all of whom were extremely quiet once the competition got started, and only G talked once throughout the whole phonics time, which meant that N, J, and D received 5 dollars each.

Obviously something about it being a competition or the incentive of the money was enough to turn around the bad talking streak that all of them had fallen into yesterday.

The downside is that the other three boys seemed unaffected by the competition, or at least not enough affected. R talked out 3 times, down from 6 on Monday, but B and T actually increased their talking from Monday, B from 4 to 7, and T from 3 to 4.

I know that I cannot continue using the addition of the money to motivate this group because it doesn't work for all of them, and while I appreciate the boys who were quiet from it, I cannot put the other three in a position where they talk more because that will negatively affect the class as a whole.

I am back to the drawing board again, and the worst part is that the whole reason I started this project in the first place is because I felt that I had exhausted my ideas on how to handle this unruly class, and I was really hopeful that with more positive feedback, which I feel like I am doing, and behavior contracts, I would really show significant improvement and then my class would be "cured" but instead it is just a step in the right direction, but I have to continue doing something just to keep my head above water. Well... tomorrow's another day, I'll see what I come up with by then.