Behavior Modification Device/Motivational Tool.
The motivational tool that I tried to use the most was teaching by invitation. Teaching by invitation is a great way to keep students motivated and on task. This motivational tool gives students the freedom to choose what they want to do through out the lesson, and skills being taught. When working on a skill, the teacher gives at least a couple of options of what they can do with a skill and how to use the skill. For example, if the skill was jumping rope, the teacher would say "You can keep track of how many different ways to jump rope," or "If you want to, you can try to doing tricks while jumping rope." I also feel that this options leaves the door open so that more advance students can keep working on advance skills while less proficient students can work on there own skills to improve. These things allow students to do easier things if they feel a task is too hard for them, or if they want to challenge themselves, the teacher leaves that option open. This will prevent boredom for the students and hopefully keep them paying more attention and stay on task. When students have the power to decide, they will stay motivated which is why this is an effective motivational tool.
In many cases I told the students to do whatever kind of movement they want. One example of this is in the mirroring and matching activity. When they were working with a partner or group, they were asked to make whatever movement they want and their partner was to follow that movement, then switch so everybody gets to do what movement they want. In this case and the other times that I used this motivational tool the students seemed to stay on task more than if I told them what to do.
In the beginning of the teaching episodes I did not have a true behavior modification device. Towards the end I used the phrase "sit on your hands" to keep students from touching each other and playing with the equipment that we were using at the time.
