Hehehe no, well maybe....just kidding :) The 'in' thing right now in 4th and 5th grade is to have marbles. All the schools seem to be like this. The bad part is they want to play it all the time in class. My rule as a sub (and generally the teacher's rule too) is that they can have them as long as they only play with them at recess. If it happens in class, then I get to 'have' them. I just have a baggy and collect them and put them in the teacher's desk and write the student's name on it.
Well it didn't take too long for me to get a collection going...and all from one kid lol. You think after he lost his best marble to me he'd learn. It's called a cookie because of the bits of glass in it looks like crumbs. I also happen to have one and took a pic
The only times I normally see marbles are when teachers use marbles as a visual (and audio) reminder for class reward. The teacher has a jar and if the class is on task, adds a marble or 2...the plink makes a nice reminder. And if a teacher so choose, if the class is 'bad' then they take out a marble and makes noise. Once the jar is full there is a party or reward. You could also make it into a math lesson by having them estimate how many marbles they think are in the jar. You could even graph out how many blue marbles, clear marbles, cookie marbles etc are in the jar. Even make a writing project out of it and have students get a marble and write a story about it with a prompt about how one day they were walking along and found it on the ground. Who do they think it belongs to? Where did it come from? That way it's about a topic that they like and are more interested in it.
Great idea for how to use a simple item! I was a sub for two years, and I know where you are coming from! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteNo problem :) Other classes also use kidney beans and can fill the jar with a scoop. So many ideas I see, a bonus with subbing!
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