Teaching Tools : Positive Competition

I have a few students who would be very successful economists; they're all about incentive. It's amazing what the promise of stickers will do for a 5 year old, but when they're 7 or 8 that's old news. After a few experiments, I learned that absolutely nothing surpasses sour-cherry gummies. Rest assured I am not advocating the exchange of scales/songs for candy, no... but in the most desperate situations, it always works. It got me thinking of ways to motivate students that would develop internally, a drive that they could manifest over time themselves, and not attribute their success to sweets at Olivia's house.

I have a student who is high energy, very smart but and a hard time staying focused and being motivated, with potential through the roof. However, he thrives on compeition. He's engaged in sports and often speaks in comparisons; comparing me to other teachers, himself to friends, his siblings to himself. It made me wonder if there was a way to incorporate a positive competition, exclusive of his siblings who I also teach. That's when I decided to pull out my phone and put on a timer- giving him a set amount of time to complete tasks, letting him feel the adrenalin of a race without pitting him against anyone but himself.

It's actually proven to me to be quite successful in both playing tasks and fine motor tasks. I feel like my job in this situation is to verbally explain our goals and tasks one at a time and dedicate portions of the lesson to it, so we're not scrambling between activities. Listening time or fine motor, writing & theory time and piano playing time. In a 30 minute lesson we might dedicate 10 minutes to revision, 10 minutes to FM or Listening and then 10 minutes to new material. Now, a few minutes are shaved off each section because of coming and going, chitter-chatter or distraction. Although using the timer actually made our lesson much richer, becuase it kept my student aware of the time that he was wasting and got rid of some anxiety about how long the lesson was. Obviously I do not want to instagate too much competition, or perfectionism for my student, but right now it's working as a motivational tool so I will take it as that. I think if I saw signs of frustration or anger if the student ran out of time, that's when I'd remove the excercise. I still think it's important to stress the quality and the completion of the task or goal rather than the efficiency. These hairy details remind me that as much foresight and preparation as I can do, a student can always be having a bad day, really good day, they may have gotten in trouble at school... and it's important to figure out the situation once you're in it. I don't think I'll use the timer every lesson for this student because it would be predictable, but it's a great tool for motivation and has created that feeling of competition in a positive way.