Question of The Week: How I Get My Students To Engage Outside of Class

During my first fall conference in 2018, I thought of a new way to get to know my students a little more and get them to engage in writing in English outside of class.

Question of the week.

I'm sure this sounds silly, but it works. Well...usually.

Every Friday, I post a question for the next week. They are never Yes or No questions. Sometimes they are really simple, like "What's your favorite color" or a little harder, like "What's your favorite part about winter?"

The easier questions tend to get more answers, but I always get some.

The reward for this is at the end of each week, I will put the names of all the students who participated in a digital roulette wheel (one for each class), and I spin it. The winner gets to pick a piece of candy out of my candy box. The candy box is something I pay for on my own. I stock it with M&M's, lollypops, gummies, etc. Bigger candies to make them excited.

Some of my students are really excited about this and will answer every week, some have never answered in the year and a half I've been doing this, but it is fun nonetheless. They get so excited to see their names on the wheel.

I have had trouble with the students not putting their names on the paper or their class numbers, so I've had some bummed kids who thought they were going to be on the wheel but weren't, but they learn, and they remember next week.