The Quiet Game

Four of the six classes I teach are sixth grade English classes. I love sixth graders. Most of them are still very sweet and want to please their teachers. My 7th and 8th graders..not so sweet and not so pleasing. All students are getting more relaxed and less motivated to do work now that testing is over. Because of this, I try to do more fun projects the rest of the year. They have no more essays, no more practice tests, etc. A couple days this week they were creating caricatures of themselves for a history heritage project they're doing. I have packets of caricature facial features, hair, and bodies that they get to choose from and trace. For whatever reason, my fifth period (my most rambunctious group) came in on Wednesday and wanted to know if we could play the quiet game all hour and whoever wins will get $5 of their team money. This class consists of 8 boys most of whom have ADHD or ADD or something like that...so of course..I said, "YES, what a GREAT idea!!" They were all so excited, and surprisingly kept their mouths shut the entire time, so there was no winner. On Thursday, they wanted to do it again..and still no winner. On Friday, they wanted to do it again..and still no winner. Just for the record, if they need to tell me something, all they have to do is raise their hand and then they can talk. The first day, all they told me was "So and so just mouthed something to me," "No I didn't," "Yes he did, I saw him too." They asked if we can continue on Monday, but believe it or not, it has been too quiet in there, and I think it may be a little difficult to do group projects if they can't talk.