I have a few little friends who are very quick to respond to questions. They will give me an answer before I have even finished my question! I have tried verbal reminders to wait for the question to be finished before answering, waiting until I give a ‘go’ signal to answer, we have tried used a special object that hold and they cannot answer until I give it to them. These each worked…for about a day. After thinking and reading some of that books I have collected over the years about my friends who are highly impulsive, I decided to try one last thing, playing catch. That’s right, a good old game of catch! I had the student stand away from my table a bit and listen to the question, prompt, cue, whatever my target was. I would then toss them the ball and they had to wait until they handed it back to me to answer. I did preface this by saying that they must be thinking of their answer as they were walking back to the table. Now my room isn’t big, this took about 2 seconds for my kids. But, that seemed to be enough to slow down most of them. So, if you have some students who can answer questions quicker than you can blink, give playing catch a try.
3 Responses
Clever!
What age range is this for? I like the idea but I work with preschoolers.
The behavior is the same so age doesn’t make much difference. I will caution to they amount of time a preschooler can developmentally focus is very different from that of a 2nd grader so teaching and reinforcing will take more time.