Tried It Tuesday

Ever try anything super neat fun rad in your classroom and wanted to share it with someone...anyone!!! That's pretty much me on a regular sporadic basis. Mr. B can only take so many school stories a week, half the time I figure he is tuning me out anyways. Most of you (teachers) probably have a team to share with, but I don't, cue the sad violin music.

Anyways, I have seen a bunch of teachers linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper each week for Tried it Tuesday and I thought I would give it a try. 

I really wish I could take credit for this idea, cause it is completely genius  but I found this last summer/fall on a random blog stalk hunt and the bookmark went to the way side as my computer seems to get viruses on the regular.

Behold the ... 

When my students are working in pairs or groups they have a tendency to want to ask me for help before they consult their partner. Or in the case of my students ask the stupidest silliest questions. 

Case in point: 

'do I write my name on my reward ticket,' 

'where are the legos'

 'what should I be doing'

 ' what are you grading'

 'where is my kit.'

  There are days I want to beat my head against the wall, at the frequency of some of these questions. 

Or scream 'IT'S WEEK 17! NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!!'

So rather than injure myself or 'frighten' my students I started using these question slips. 

Each group gets 4 slips a week to ask me whatever questions they feel are relevant to the class project. And yes this includes 'can I go to the bathroom?' I am evil, what can I say.

Anytime a student ask a question, after of course I ask the whole class if they have questions I am not a total witch, I ask them if they would like to use a question slip for that. The typical response is no and low and behold they go and solve their own problem. Although my favorite response is when their partner pipes up and says what do you want then normally answers their question. Insert genius evil laugh.

At first I was worried that these slips would discourage students from asking for help when they really need it, but honestly the opposite has happened. My classes are further along than I expected and I am hearing much more on task partner talk. And when a group really does ask a question I have the opportunity to sit down and really work with them rather than trying to answer 800 'silly' questions all period.

Perhaps this won't work for all classes but for me it has been an absolute thrilling experience of tasking my students to analyzing what they actually need help on, taking their own initiative to solve a problem and helping each other.

And yes my pictures are just snapped from my computer screen, I never felt right posting these on TPT even though I changed the language as it wasn't really my concept/idea. So snag the language or just the idea and tweak it for you classroom!

- The Babbling Box!