Student Contributor: S. Burton
This tool helps to get the room clean quickly at the end of the day. It is a fun way for students to become motivated about the way their classroom looks.
This is a tool to help clean the room at the end of the day as well as help students build responsibility for their own classroom. The students will have practiced this task until they understand the expectations of keeping the volume low and being cautious while searching for scraps. The teacher chooses two scraps and waits for students to be ready at their desk. When ready the teacher allows them to begin searching. The person who found the chosen scrap gets a reward. When using this tool, I found it helped build community in the classroom. The students wanted their room to look nice instead of being upset with winner, they congratulated and praised the winner. As the teacher choosing it was easy to rotate who won as the secret scrap is only known by you. As a result, you can wait for that student and say what they picked up.
I put this in the supportive phase as it helps students learn why having a clean room is important. It helps teach them responsibility, community, and gain a sense of pride. This is a tool that is student centered yet collaborative as the teacher is the main director, but the students are the one doing all the work. It relates to the other two phases as being able to work as a community to clean up the room helps to prevent arguments between students and prevents accidents that may arise in a messy room. It relates to the corrective phase as because it limits the reasons a correction would need to be made. With a clean room the students are able to engage more and feel pride while being in the classroom.
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Tool Source: Mrs. Sandra Olsen
My classroom is a suburban school and we have 20 students. I thought this tool would be a great one to try out as we are often lining up late because the classroom doesnt get picked up at the end of the day. This tool was very easy to implement and the kids love it. It turned a chore into a game and now the students pick up the room faster than I’ve ever seen before and it ends up looking so good as every student wants to be the one to pick up the “secret scrap”. Something I may do in the future is to implement this throughout the day. If the classroom is getting to be a little too messy I would say “we’re going to play secret scraps” and set a timer. Overall this is a great tool that I will definitely be using in my classroom!
My classroom is a 5th grade class in an urban school with about 24 students. This tool was easy to prepare for because you didn’t need anything but some messy kids and scraps on the ground. I was able to teach this fast at the end of the day while students lined up. I just told them the floor looked messy and I was going to pick a secret scrap on the ground, whoever finds the scrap wins a piece of candy. I then quickly explained the expectations and said go! This tool was successful because students were excited about cleaning the floor, the janitor was probably happy when he came in that night, and nobody complained when they weren’t the winner because it could have been anyone. An adjustment you could make would be to have a student helper pick a “secret scrap”, whisper it into your ear and then stand next to you.