Pick ’em

A quick write-up on an even quicker routine that I use regularly in my class: Pick ’em.

Who doesn’t like a good booger joke?

Way back when I was teaching in Denver, I came up with this idea for a role board. Each desk in each group (I group my kids in groups of 4) gets a small dot of nail polish. Red, Blue, Green or Yellow. It lets me assign tasks randomly to students in a group. For example, “Red desk, bring up papers for your group” or “Blue desks, share your ideas at your table first.”

To go with the dots of color, I bought these clear containers at The Container Store and made some little colored circles out of construction paper and a Dominoes pizza box.

The circles are red, blue, green and yellow and match the dots on the desks, and I move the dots each time before I use them to assign jobs. With the “1,2,3,4” role cards shown above, the blue desk would go first, then the green desk, then red, then yellow.

I like this setup because it is very visually clear what each kid should be doing, and it keeps things random for the kids. It’s also very easy to create new “role” cards for behind the dots, so you can use the roles for a wide variety of classroom activities. I use this role board with many of my classroom routines, but this is the simplest one. I use it as a better “you do” activity when I use direct instruction in class.

I start by putting up a set of problems (this is a graphing problem set) for the kids to see. The desk whose color is in the “1” position gets first “pick” of the problems on the board. They would share with their group what they pick, and begin working. “2” picks next and so on. No two members of a group can pick the same problem. It introduces a small amount of choice to class, every kid at each table gets a different problem, and gets the kids talking about the problems that they are working on.

I also use a variant often that I call “Pick and Role”

It’s basically the same thing, but I have the students TEACH the rest of their groups how to solve the problem that they are working on. I usually provide a vocab bank for them to use, and again, I use the role board to assign who explains their process/ thinking first.

Sometimes, I have the kids pass their mini-whiteboards to the next person in their group to have them grade each other’s work. I call that Pick ’em, Pass ’em. And I use this graphic. Because Boogers are funny. Even if you’re 34 years old.