Student motivation – During the first week of the school year I had the students think of a goal. These goals were to be program oriented. The students then wrote their personal goals onto some thought bubbles and I posted them in the classroom. These goals are a visible daily reminder to the students of what they are “aiming” for. And I feel they really help set the tone for the learning environment.
Social Interaction – I have created some Kahoot games for the students to participate in. The students prefer to play Kahoot in teams, so our team grouping is always done at random. I use different methods to choose the teams like names from a hat, or neighboring partner schools. I utilize the random selection so the teams are diversified in a different way each time we play. This exposes the students to multiple the personalities and types of learners within their groups.
Social Interaction – Here at Sentinel Career and Technology Center we are a National School of Character. Every Friday I plan a character education and development lesson.  I have used a lesson called “Get off the Gossip Train” recently. In this lesson, the students squeeze some toothpaste from the tube and then write their name on a piece of paper and trace over it with toothpaste. This is meant to represent spreading gossip. In my Electrical Trades Program, we used wire lubricant instead of toothpaste. The students were then asked to put the wire lube back in the bottle. Once the students realized how difficult the task was they were told to compare this to cleaning up their gossip. We had group discussions. Comparisons of gossip at school, to gossip at work. We even had a discussion board on itsLearning. This really resonated with my students, and gave them the chance to see other people’s perspectives. 

Rainbow Rules – Student Motivation 

At our school, the entire first day is about going over the rules and expectations for school and for each class. The day begins with an assembly in which the administrators go over certain expectations for the year.  I, of course, have my own classroom rules, procedures, and expectations to go over, but on the first day I do not go over my traditional rules. I go over what I call the “Rainbow Rules” with my classes.  The Rainbow Rules include motivational ideas such as, 

Keep Moving Forward – Don’t worry about where you are not. Work to improve from where you are. 

Be Patient and Persistent – Be patient and persistent with yourself. We are learning new things. 

Can’t may only be used with Yet –  I Can’t do this… YET.  You will eventually get it. 

Failure is Good – It means you tried to do SOMETHING. 

I start with these to encourage and motivate my students to put forth their best effort with all our projects, and to not play it safe within their comfort zone. This helps creates an atmosphere that is encouraging and accepting to learning, experimenting, failing, and succeeding.  

Within the first few days of classes, I pass out a Post-It note to everyone and have them to doodle their first name, along with other doodles and words about them, what they like to do, what they are good at etc.  I do this along with them, and when we are finished we take turns introducing ourselves and sharing what we have doodled and why.  It gives us a chance to get to know a little bit about each other and learn about shared extracurricular activities, music interests, and hobbies.  Afterward, I have the students place their name doodle on their storage locker in the classroom to label their locker.  This identifies everyone’s locker, adds a personal touch, and allows everyone to see the Name Doodles we created. (Mine goes by my office door). 

 

I insist that my students use their class time effectively and productively to develop and complete each design project I assign.  The day immediately following a project’s due date is set aside for a Class Critique of the completed projects.   If every student has used our class time effectively and productively, and every student has their project completed and turned in on the due date, I provide a snack for us to enjoy while we are critiquing and reviewing everyone’s project.   It is usually something simple like cookies or cupcakes, but no one wants to be responsible of robbing their classmates of the Critique Cookies.  This helps keep my students on task and working productively to meet their due dates.  It also helps makes our class critiques a celebration of their accomplishments and hard work.

Student Motivation
At the beginning of the year I told the students they have the chance to earn an extra 20 points to there grade for each quarter they have perfect attendance. So far they all have taken to the idea and have made their own computation with each other in the class to see who will earn the most.
Encourage Motivation,
I have introduce the SKILLS USA program to my juniors using seniors and the accomplishments of other students here at the school to show how they can move forward in life using the skills they learn in this program. Being a former student and a skills participant 
I can tell them how much this helped me in life and building my career. 
Social Interaction,
Each Friday here at Sentinel Career Technology Center we have a Character Education where every student wears the same shirt and every class does an activity to get the students to interact with each other in games, worksheets, and other activity's. We played a game called Jenga you might of heard of this. We pull a block out and they is a number on it and with each blocked pulled they have to answer a question either in current events or they may be a question on the work we did so far in the class. I find that the students have fun moving around and listening to there colleagues answer questions.

Encourage Student Motivation – For orientation night I set up a “razzle dazzle” demonstration on a CNC vertical machining center.  The purpose of this demo was to show the students some of the skills to be learned in the class, what the trade is all about and what industry is looking for.  A number of students and their parents developeda  clearer idea of what precision machining is all about.  The shiny metal piece they held in their hand put flesh so to speak on the concepts I spoke of.  One mother became quite excited to see what her son would be able to learn to do as she watched the machine run and observed the finished product.  

 

Student Motivation – Similar to what Matt Kulbis mentioned in his idea #3, our class has undertaken several class projects structured in such a way that there was room for students to take ownership and assume leadership.  They have quite naturally learned to work together to meet the goals and objectives of the special projects and some of the strongest leadership has been drawn out from some of the seemingly unlikeliest candidates.  Their motivation has come from wanting to be a part of something bigger than themselves.