Roses and Thorns

During the school day, I also let my students start off with telling me how their evening (the day before) went. Well, my student started to get very verbose, and one time 13 students took 45 minutes to inform me of their evening.

So, I decided to change to roses and thorns. They had to tell me one each for sure. This has turned into:

"Miss Slotegraaf, I have three roses. Can I tell them all?" How can you say no to that?

Regardless of all the roses and thorns per students, it has decreased their verbose down significantly.

One of my favourite incidences however, was how one of my students handles this new trend. He, the night before, will list his roses and thorns on a piece of paper. He will take this piece of paper to school so that he will not forget any. He was rather upset the one day when he had forgotten his paper and therefore could not remember all his roses and thorns.

Never underestimate the power of listening to a child.