Pick a Stick

I took some training this summer called ENVoY. There is so much value in the lessons I learned from this continuing training that I am doing.  One of the BIG suggestions that the philosophy gives is conserving energy as the teacher. This is accomplished with less verbal directions. I have been working on this a ton, but I thought I would share one of my experiments with you today.  I'm trying a technique called, pick a stick. This is where I ask students to choose a stick from the middle of the table that is marked with some symbols and numbers. In the Art Room, we get lots of materials out, when the kids each get a stick, I can give a task... assign it a number... and the job will be completed by the student holding that number. 

I'm not sure if it's going to work but here is why I'm trying again. I have given the number to chairs... the chairs get moved around the room with after-school activities and sometimes with the classroom activities as well. So there was always a number that was missing or a person who didn't want to sit in the 'number 2 chair' or whatever it would be. I then tried numbers on the table, but they got picked off. I think this might work because everytime the number that you 'pick' will be different. The number I pick... will be random and this should eliminate some of the problems I ran into thus far in classroom management.

Anytime, I offer one new change in the classroom, It's a matter of teaching 30 sections the same thing so, often I will record my instructions. The video will give a better idea of what I plan to do with the stick.  As always, I'll report back if this management trick is working or not in a couple of months.