Amazing What a Little Bribery Can Do

Two weeks ago my 5th graders and I spent a whole day stressing over testing the Math portion of the TAKS test. We had prepared and prepared and prepared and last night I find out it had all paid off. My kids did an AWESOME job! Every single one of my students passed and 21 of my 23 earned commended performance! That means they missed 4 or less of the 40 questions on the test. Now, I knew they had it in them, they performed last year and in March when we took the Reading test. However this time around I really pushed for them to get commended. I know it probably wasn't the best thing to do but about a week before the test I just went for it and did it: I bribed them. It happened in the middle of TAKS Review #1674849. They all had this glazed look in their eyes and I knew I had lost them. I stopped right in the middle of a problem and explained to them I had all the confidence in the world that they would pass. What I needed from them was to ROCK the test, show those people at the testing agency exactly what we knew and how we weren't going to let a test like this BEAT us. Then it just came out of my mouth "Commended performance on the Math test will get you a No Homework pass for math for the REST OF THE YEAR!" Some of them asked me to repeat what I had just said, others looked like they were ready to pass out from the excitment. Ok so they had no idea our last six weeks curriculum in math really doesn't require a lot of math homework anyway but I needed them to really give it their all and they did! In one week we test Science and I'm already thinking of what to throw at them next!