This weekend I encountered a pack of coconut chewy candy that asked to be taken home.

Today I brought those candies into my classroom.

It’s not uncommon to use stickers as a form of motivation so I was curious what how candy would be received.

At the end of class asa final quiz I called up each student to review the flash cards with me.

Did students suddenly become mini Einstein rattling off the words like it was their first name?

No!

Instead of seeing a huge increase in memory recall from the students their memory seemed to have fallen out of their skull.

They were so focused on the snacks in my lap that students who could normally recall the word could not.

It was too much of a distraction.

It did increased the enthusiasm of the students to review, but there performance was overall down.

How to balance the two?

Creating excitement, covering a reward, and not having it be so distracting for the students?