Key to any teacher’s bag of tricks is positive reinforcement—or as it’s called in the outside world, bribery. Whether it’s based on performance or based on behavior, all effective teachers know when to dangle the carrot from the stick.

Perhaps in no other time of the year, other than May/June, do students need some added incentive to stay focused than during the holidays. Between Halloween dances, Thanksgiving break, and finally the end-of-the-year holiday break, students have a tough time keeping their heads in their books or their eyes on their iPads.

Here are some ideas that don’t require loading the kids up with sugar or wasting a class day on a party.

Earn a positive call/text home

Positive reports to parents are something you should be doing anyway, but by using them as a positive reinforcement, it gives the students something tangible to keep track of and work toward. When you introduce the program, let them know that these calls/texts will be occurring right before school lets out for the winter break, and that any positivity coming from school might make a big difference on whether they receive a new video game system or a lump of coal from Santa.

Invest in stickers

It may be shocking to the uninitiated, but even high schoolers get excited at the prospect of stickers. The difference being that younger students like wearing stickers themselves while older students would rather give them to someone else (so keep the backing on). It’s positive reinforcement that doesn’t cost much, doesn’t load them with sugar, and is easily trackable.

Charge time

Let’s just stop pretending students aren’t using their phones in class. They do, and when they do they are spending precious battery power. Battery power is quickly becoming currency in middle and high school and they will often ask you if they can use your plugs to charge up. Start attaching a positive reinforcement to that privilege. After all, if a student is missing their homework, why should you do them any favors? The kids will quickly start flying right once they realize your room can be a fueling station.

Positivity across the subject areas

Administration always wants the subject areas to work together in multidisciplinary ways. Get together with a buddy who works in your grade level for a multidisciplinary lesson that can be done together, combining your classes. But hold it over the kids’ heads as a reward, since they will get to see their friends from other classes that they don’t normally get to work with. It’s not a “party”, per se, but it accomplishes a similar goal.

The Next Level

Have you had success with any other positive reinforcement ideas? Educate us in the comments below.

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And if you feel your child needs a little more help preparing for this rigorous new curriculum, please find out more about Athena’s services and how they can help you using this link.

Utilize pumpkins for a fun math project.

Veteran teachers know that from now until after the holidays, it will be a little more challenging to keep the students engaged in what’s going on in the classroom. A good strategy is to incorporate some of the themes that are surrounding them once they leave the campus.

Here are some fun, yet challenging lesson ideas for incorporating autumn into each subject area’s curriculum.

Science: Now’s the time for photosynthesis

Fall is the biggest time of year for photosynthesis. After all, if it wasn’t for the change in the ability of plants to create energy, their leaves wouldn’t fall in the first place. When studying photosynthesis, you can make the lesson as complicated as you want depending on the grade level you’re trying to reach, including various experiments with healthy plants. Age-appropriate explanations for why leaves change color can be found at Science Made Simple.

Math: Get out the pumpkins!

Pumpkins are a natural ally to math teachers everywhere. They come in a variety of weights and sizes, or circumferences and radiuses for geography teachers. Smaller children love to carve them up and use the seeds for various arithmetical exercises, while the older kids can start working on more complicated tasks including building their own pumpkin-chucking machine for studying trajectory and laws of motion. They make the room smell nice, too.

Social Science: Track the foliage

This works particularly well as a teaming activity with a science teacher studying photosynthesis (see above). A good place to start is the national foliage map from the Weather Channel. Using various data found online, students can start piecing together what is happening with the foliage around the country. See if they can make some friends on Skype in a place where the colors are quite different from home, especially if you’re teaching in an area where the leaves don’t change. Advanced students can create their own foliage map based on temperature data and other factors.

English/Language Arts: It’s Poe time!

Frankly, the work of Edgar Allan Poe seems out of place in any other season. The imagery is a bit cold and dark, just like fall. Aside from reading his poetry or short stories, take some time to introduce the concept of gothic horror to the students and ask them to create their own stories in the same tradition. Sharing is also important. When students create any writing, it should be written to be read by more than just their teacher. Find some works from other authors with unreliable narration or suspense and run a comparison.

The Next Level

Have you had success with any other fall-themed lesson units? Educate us in the comments below.

If you thought this article brought up some valuable points, please share it among your social networks using the buttons.

And if you feel your child needs a little more help preparing for this rigorous new curriculum, please find out more about Athena’s services and how they can help you using this link.