When a Teacher's Mistake Leads to Students' Success!

I had a very boisterous 8th grade Spanish class this year, more boisterous than in years past. They are strong students with a lot of spunk, aggravated by a class time around lunch, before or after depending on the day! I was letting them get a little out of control and to add to my frustration I was having a tough year at school in general for non-classroom reasons. The combination of factors left me feeling a little desperate in February. At the end of a particularly exasperating day, I plunked myself down in my chair and told myself that I needed to turn the class around and fast; for their benefit and my own!

I knew that if they spoke half as much in Spanish as they did in English that they would improve their Spanish so much and we would be more productive. So printed out green tickets with "Yo hablé en español" in bold across the front and red tickets with "Yo hablé en inglés." I typed up a rubric for them to grade themselves at the end of the week, and made a simple three column spreadsheet: name, green tickets, red tickets. I introduced the idea to the class, the boisterous 8th grade class, of course. It was an instant success. They accepted it as a game and a challenge. They started coming up with all sorts of things to say, using past vocabulary to describe everything and everyone in class, "Carly es muy inteligente pero habla mucho," narrating the class "Nosotros escribimos en la pizarra, nosotros trabajamos en grupos, señora" or just boldly asking for tickets, "Yo quiero una entrada verde, señora, por

favor!"

We set a goal that they should try to get 12 tickets a week, though some get well beyond that. It totally turned around my 8th grade class and has really jump started their Spanish skills. After a few months now, and having introduced it to other classes including novice 7th graders, I have learned a few things that have helped me fine tune the system. If you are considering using something similar consider these tips below.

Find times to go chat with quiet students who wouldn't normally talk in front of other students. While they are doing warm-up work, working in groups, or working quietly on something, I find a few moments to go over and chat with them. I also pay extra attention to them when they are working in groups and speak with partners in Spanish, so that I can recognize their efforts.
Be sure not to reward shouting out and being disruptive even in Spanish. I make sure to explain that they are not being respectful of others when they are yelling and disrupting.
Print out more green tickets than you think you need! The students may surprise you!
Press students to keep the conversation going. Reward them with more than one ticket. This encourages longer interactions.
Sometimes you can add things into your lesson plans to boost participation, specific activities that allow you to give out more tickets, "speed dating" with quiz quiz trade cards, for example.
Make sure that you are giving more greens than red, after all the idea is to recognize their efforts to speak Spanish! Hopefully they notice that right away.
Lastly, adapt it to your classroom. My colleague has her classes in "familias" and they compete against each other for the most "entradas verdes" and it doesn't ever go into the grade book! Still, it works! This is nice because the family members encourage each other to speak more to earn more tickets.