Welcome to week 16 of our Spotlight on Strategies Challenge!  Our new S.O.S series to provide help, tips, and tricks for integrating DE media into your curriculum.

And the Award Goes To…
PDF Version

Background
Many of the strategies employed in classrooms today, deal with ways to enhance students cognitive skills.  If we focus solely on this, we loose a great opportunity to recognize what will provide them the extra boost to achieve those goals: reinforcing effort and recognizing achievement.  Helping students understand the difference between the two is also important to the big idea.

Example

• For your unit on the American Revolution use the following images to create certificates
• Liberty Award for cracking the code: Liberty Bell of the American Revolution
• Problem Solving Award for creative solutions: Benjamin Franklin
• Leadership Award for bravery in the face of adversity: George Washington
• Print the ten images on small strips of paper or mailing labels and distribute for participation, effort, extra credit.  Have students compete to collect all 10. When they turn in they will need to state the correlation to the American Revolution.
• Examples
• Thomas Sumter in the American Revolution
• Battle of Bunker Hill
• General John Burgoyne’s Surrender at Saratoga

Challenge

• Using white shipping labels or paper, find 10 images that match your unit of study and print several to a sheet.  When you recognize them for work well done, hand them a sticker or paper.  See who can collect all 10.
• Create fun certificates using Microsoft World or Apple’s Pages using images and clipart.  Be sure to include certificates for both effort and achievement.

Bonus
Have students nominate each other for awards and recognition