Tool #3 - Don't Give Up- Sesame Street -Bruno Mars

To me, one of the biggest obstacles to overcome is student motivation to work and be successful. So, finding motivational messages that the students connect to is important to me. I can use them at the beginning of class to get their attention to start. So, I am collecting a bank of motivational You Tube videos... This one could be used and stopped after each proverb/idiom for success, students in small groups could brainstorm personal connections to be used in narrative writing. Another motivational one with various famous motivators... Fairy Dust is an narrative immigrant story that from 1st person point of view and the students have write a narrative the first nine weeks. This is just one many digital stories that can model creating a digital story later in the school year. I continuously explain to the students the importance of making a list of sources when compiling information for a project. When they at are at the computer, I tell them to copy the link of their sources and paste it on the document. I tell them that they need to be aware that there are ramifications of not documenting the source and if it goes public and it will be discovered and can taken to court for plagiarism. The district is going to be using a program "Turn it In" to determine how much is plagerized as opposed to original thoughts and ideas. I created and have been using Dropbox since the beginning of last year.