The Teacher says "Give me the name of one State that was named after a man." And the teacher then hits a button, which starts timers in all the student computers (like stop watches, but better!) (and makes a beep)
Say that you think of George Washington. You start typing in either Geor... or Wash... The instant that you get the first four letters spelled right, a timer in your computer records the time and gives you "partial credit" (1/2, in this case), which is divided by that time in the computer to create a partial score for you. But you are not done! Once you correctly spell the rest of the name, you now get full credit, divided by the total time. The computer adds up your two part scores, say 50/1.3 seconds for the first four letters and then 100/2.9 seconds for the whole name. Your computer would have your total score of 38.46 + 34.48 or 72.94. The teacher's computer shows her the totals for every student, with the one highlighted that got the highest score, so that student could get the praise for that question!
The next question is to name a State named for a woman! Some people might get a Maryland right away, or a Virginia, but some may have to think for quite a while. No one (except the teacher) will see the results of a really bad answer. Some people may go beyond a 20 second cutoff, and not get an answer in.
Next question (verbally) the teacher says spell "condition".
Next question "what is four times five?"
Next question "Name any country in Europe"
This sort of approach would get kids INVOLVED, and INTERESTED, and COMPETITIVE. Say that the Teacher tells the class that tomorrow we will have questions about State Capitols, about countries in South America, about spelling words starting with W, and with science stuff about cats. Do you think that a LOT of those kids would ACTUALLY STUDY their homework? You bet they would. MANY would, not just one or two.
These kids would WANT to come to school, and after school, they would definitely brag to each other about how many "wins" they each had that day.
You may be thinking that there are kids who wouldn't even have interest in something like this. You might be wrong! Because of the PRIZES! The Teacher would keep a chart somewhere where all kids could see it, either in their computers or on a bulletin board, which would show vertical bar graphs. And across the top of that chart would be some lines, the very top one being "an hour out of class" or "two-hour hall pass" or many others. Lower (easier) lines could also be on that chart, like "getting a milk while in the classroom" (as a status symbol) etc.
If the Teacher arranges the right Prizes, nearly all students should have some interest in trying. As long as the Teacher stays aware of students who do not win very often, and does something to imrpove that, a bunch of happy, enthusiastic, learning kids should result.
In ANY school, in any neighborhood, and probably at any grade level. The only students that it might not be appropriate for would be students that might try to destroy the computers, behavior problems.
I trust that it is obvious that this is quite simple (the technology to do this has existed since the early 1980s) and quite inexpensive. If no computers now exist, there are very simple and inexpensive existing equipment that could do these things.
( http://mb-soft.com/public/index.html )
C Johnson, Physicist, Physics Degree from Univ of Chicago