Thursday 10 June 2010

'Time Wasting' Kids who take ages to finish work

There is a very simple and effective solution to the problem of students who drag out the publishing or presenting of work on the computer...



  1. You have 'X' amount of time to do this work
  2. If you do not finish it, you print it out and finish by hand

Do not fall for the 'I haven't finished.... I need to be on the computer again tomorrow!'

Children very quickly decide that they don't like presenting 'half and half' work and will miraculously speed up and finish their work.

7 comments:

Mr Wood said...

Thank you I love that idea, I will have to share it with my colleagues.

Moturoa said...

Cunning. Or tell them they will need to stay in at playtime to finish it.

Really hard to add a new paragraph when writing on paper!

CheesyUK said...

Honestly! Why the h%$# didn't I think of that? I love this idea!!!! So Simple and SO BRILLIANT it is going into practice tomorrow with the 'always a headache' homelink folders!

Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac) said...

Brilliant idea! Makes so much sense. I'm going to give it a try and see if it sorts out my compulsive deleters... you know the ones who type a whole lot then decide they don't like it for some reason so they delete the whole lot. Them and the ones who spend hours just searching for the font they like. Thank you for sharing the idea.
Kirstin

Anonymous said...

Yes, I've used this with my 7/8's. Works like a charm. Cuts down on the chit-chat. For me, the computer room is an extension of the classroom. It drives me nuts to colleagues using it as a playpen. My students' voices are classroom voices, period. It's not a free-for-all. Or we leave. Trust me, I only have to surrender one period for the message to be delivered for the entire year.

Claire said...

I actually include typing up as the final draft after peer conferencing. No formatting or font change allowed and the final draft MUST show me what you can do... This is what forms the teacher conference and then the actual publishing is actually really, really fast because they already have it typed. This also allows for skill teaching eg. borders, font, word art, inserting pics, etc... :)

annekenn said...

Sweet idea!!! My pet hate is the learner who spends 5 minutes formatting the title - aghaghagh - can't wait to show this to the class I visit on Thursday! Thanks
Anne K