Teachers have our little go-to time-filler activities, and one of my math class' favorite is "Who has...?"
It's a whole class game where each student gets a card with an answer and a question on it. The first student reads his card, such as "I have 16. Who has 5 x 4?" The student with the card that reads "I have 20" reads their card next. We bounce our way around the room until we get back to the first kid. It's fun! I time them, and they're always trying to beat their last score.
Well, there are 30 cards in the deck, however today I only had 26 kids in class. Several kids had to take two cards. As we worked our way through the game, Tanya (who had two cards) had the answer on one card to the question on her other card. All the kids thought it was so funny that she answered her own question! (This becomes relevant in a moment.)
After our first round, we had about 2 minutes left to fill. The kids wanted to beat their score of 1 minute and 54 seconds, so I told them to swap cards with their neighbor. I picked someone to start us off and started the timer.
We were flying through the cards. Everyone was focused and we were going to beat our time for sure!
Until we got to Oliver.
Oliver had swapped cards with Tonya.
He read his card and waited for the answer.
And waited.
And waited.
And then began looking around with this exasperated look on his face and began mumbling under his breath about how people need to be paying attention. "Hellooooo, people," he hissed.
Now, my little troopers didn't let on to what they ALL knew (check the other card in your hand, knucklehead) because we are each responsible for our own card.
Or cards.
So Oliver grumbled and mumbled and looked around accusingly. "C'mon, everybody! Figure it out," he spat.
Until finally Tanya nodded her head in the direction of his other card.
Whoops! (Insert face palm)
Sheepishly, he read his answer and the entire class roared with laughter.
Lesson learned, I hope.
And we STILL beat our time!
