1/30/09
I was working with a group of teachers the other day. We had just completed a workshop that had focused on looking at the elements of a quality problem solving environment. As part of our agenda, teachers reflected on the use of manipulatives for deepening student understanding and communication of their thinking around math concepts presented in problem solving tasks. Veronica, a second grade teacher, in a suburban school outside of Portland, OR came up to me after the workshop and said, ” The biggest challenge I have around the use of manipulatives, is student theft. I don’t even want to use white boards anymore because I keep having to replace the dry erase markers. And I have about half the pattern block I started out with. How do you deal with this issue in your classroom?” I explained to Veronica that I use storytelling a lot in my classroom to help with a variety of different issues, stealing being one of them. (As a matter of fact, I have written a book that contains a whole collection of these types of stories.)
Here’s how it works. First, I introduce the topic of stealing by telling my whole class the story called “Finders Keepers.” Next, I get them to discuss and write a reflective response in their creative writing journals. We have a process in my classroom for students who would like to share what they have written, where they put a star at the top of the entry. The next day anyone who puts the star at the top will get to take the author’s chair and share what they have written. The clas, as the audience, gives the student writer feedback in the form of “Stars” and “Wishes”. They have to give 3 stars for every wish. “Stars” are things they like about the student’s writing and “Wishes” are things they wish the person would have included in their journal entry. I also give a “Star” and a “Wish” to each student author. Sometimes I will approach a student and request that he or she allow me to share their story if I think there is something in it that would be beneficial to the class as a whole.
Finally, if I know that a particular student is responsible for a theft, I pull that student aside and talk to him or her about having a chance to earn whatever item it is that he or she wants so desperately. In my 28 years, I’ve had only a few children request that they be allowed to earn something like this and have actually had very little theft. Just calling students’ attention to the fact that it is normal to want items that belongs to someone else, hearing about how I myself struggled with that issue as a child, and helping students to see that they harm the whole class both now and into the future if they aren’t respectful of classroom property seems to be enough to have made this a non-issue throughout my years of teaching.
If you have any other ideas of ways to help children with this issue of stealing or just want to comment on something I’ve written here, I’d love to hear from you.