Snowball Fight!

I think I will try just about anything to motivate my class to be good this year. I have a difficult class and I am doing everything I can think of. I got a great idea last week and it worked pretty well- A SNOWBALL FIGHT! If your school is like ours then snowballs are against the rules. They can be dangerous. But what about paper snowballs? During the week, at the end of each day, we review what we've been working on. So this week, when someone could give me the right answer, a good example, or spell a word right, they got a paper snowball to throw in the trash bin. They LOVED it!

My kids thought is was lots of fun and tried hard to answer and win a snowball. So then I decided to bribed them for the whole week. If they could be really good all week long, we would have a snowball fight on Friday. Now let's just say that they were not perfect. But they really tried hard. So at the end of the day on Friday, (it had to be the very, very last 5 minutes of the day otherwise, well you know why) I gave everyone 3 snowballs (I used scrap piece of paper, left over worksheets etc.) and told them it was a game to see who could defend their 'fort' (table). I set the timer and said go.

The team with the least amount of snowball at the end was the WINNER! But we all were winners because it was soooo much fun.
Now my only hope is it will carry over to next week. We'll try it again and see if it will help them be good for another week. Just one day, one week at a time. That's how I'm getting through the year!
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!