Saturday motivation...

Hey y'all.. its Saturday.. that means linking Joanne from headoverheelsforteaching.blogspot.com for her Saturday Motivation linkup...

This week I am stealing my idea from tpt... I DID NOT come up with this myself.. I wish I did... but here it is...
ok.. I am a firm believer that in the business world and around the world in general... Fridays should be low key... not like a blow off.. but you know.. we've worked hard all week... we deserve a treat... so on Fridays we do brown bag buddies...Brown bag buddies connects all things that kids love... friends,brown bags, and most important...  cookies!!! 
Heres how it works... When we come back from recess around 12:25 the students pick a book at their reading level that is new.... then I pair them up..(usually a high with a low rarely two boys or two girls.. its usually a boy and a girl... lessens the temptation of playing) then I put a snack pack in the bag for each person... the pairs read their books to each other while they eat their cookies... then... after they are done reading, they write the names of their book on one side of the paper bag along with the author and one thing that they would like to report about the book...(favorite part, what they liked about it, least favorite part, etc) then on the other side of the paper bag they write the name of their partners book, author and on thing about the partners book... then we share....
The investment to this is about 10.00 a week... that sounds like a lot when you write it down... but I have 26 students so I have to buy two boxes of snack packs a week.. sometimes if its a tight week... I only do one box and the pairs split the snack packs.. theres 6 to a pack and they each get 3... that cuts down the investment to 4.95 a week... (but thats at Jewel so if you go to WalMart.. its probably cheaper. ..)
I really like this activity because it goes with the daily 5's "read to someone"... they read EEKK.. elbow to elbow.. knee to knee... I don't do the daily 5 in a traditional way... but I do like all the aspects... so I try to incorporate them in some way...
I do this activity every Friday unless there is something that prevents it like an assembly or testing.. First graders like cookies.. and when you give them cookies... it kind of calms the savage beasts in them....