Vicki Pergande, a sixth grade social studies and language arts teacher at Van Hoosen Middle School in Rochester, Michigan

My tip is an idea to get students to pay attention when watching movies in class. I usually make up a question sheet so they can look for answers during the movie, but this time I tried something different.

I still made up a list of questions, but I didn't show it to them. Before the movie I told the students to take notes they could use for a question game that we would play the next day. I informed them that the more notes they took during the film, the better chance they would have to win a “fabulous mystery prize.” I also gave the students clues about the type of information that might be important. We watched the movie and they took notes.

The next day it was time for the game. I explained I would give them a decent amount of time (it wasn't race) to answer as many questions as they could. I warned them that talking would disqualify them from the game and earn them a different assignment; I also gave them ideas of what to do when they were done, so they would continue to provide a quiet atmosphere for their peers. When we went over the answers, we corrected in red, and they wrote in the answers. I give them a quiz on the information the next week, so they make their own study guide.

Each student listened very attentively for the answers, because they had a chance to win! I gave the top three students prizes (pencils and scratch and sniff stickers). Then I gave away a mystery prize: I picked from a cup with numbered Popsicle sticks, and if they had the number on the Popsicle stick, they won a sticker. This was great, because even students who had trouble taking notes had a chance to win a prize. In one class 5 students out of 30 had the right number and won the mystery prize!