Thursday, April 21, 2022

Don’t Stop and Wait

In The power of TK from Seth Godin's Blog, Seth Godin shares

“It’s what you write when there’s a fact or addition you’re waiting on. Instead of stopping everything, simply type “TK” and you know you can come back and fix it later.”

When my students need help, many will raise their hands and stop working. I sometimes will acknowledge that I see they need help but ask them to skip that problem and go on to the next one until I can help them. Sometimes they get impatient and either figure it out themselves or ask a classmate for help.

Then after eating at a restaurant and seeing a neat strategy they use to help better service, I thought I could use the same strategy in my class.

I cut red and green foam boards into squares and glued the squares together. On the red side, I wrote HELP and on the green side, I wrote OK. Each student has this square on the corner of their desk. When they need help, they turn it over to the red and after I help them I turn it over to the green. When I’m done helping a student, I can glance around the room and see who else needs help. The students don’t waste time sitting there with their hands up and then give up or have to wait until I look up again to raise their hand. I could tell their frustration and impatience were much lower with this simple strategy. The students seemed to like this system also.

By using this strategy, students were completing more assignments and were more successful in the classroom.

What strategy do you use to help students get help? Please share.

Photo by Jorge Rojas on Unsplash

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