rubber stamps [not just for primary teachers]

in the six years that I have been teaching I have collected a good amount of rubber stamps

many have come from my sister around birthdays and christmas time

and a lot I have picked up from the dollar baskets at Michael's 

one year I even asked for ink pads as "stocking stuffers"

and the collection is looking pretty rounded at this point

when I was a kid, stamps were only for little kids

but guess what, big kids LOVE them, I think even more sometimes

and they are really useful in the classroom

when I started focussing on more project based instruction in my classes

I realized that kids were doing pieces of different assignments

but not turning things in until everything was due

because they "needed" those pre-assignments to finish the final project

and quickly I realized that I was not able to monitor 

who was getting the pieces done on time

whether it was homework or classwork

and this is when I realized that stamping was going to be my best friend

now instead of trying to collect and return papers in the blink of an eye

or recording scores on grading sheets

I can simply walk the classroom and stamp the papers that are done "on time"

and those that are incomplete do no receive the stamp

which makes grading much less complicated and I know that those who were doing

the work when assigned were getting the credit they deserved

and those who might have been slacking off a tad

would lose the points, and I wasn't going crazy with papers flying everywhere

I've also used stamping for participation points

an extra stamp on a grading rubric tells me they did the "extra credit" participation piece

whatever that may have been for the project

I even stamped the song lyrics that we used everyday when learning the Bill of Rights

the kids got a stamp for singing along, and not losing the paper for the entire week

and at the end of the week, they turned in the lyrics

and got one extra credit point for each stamp

 they had collected over the five days

great incentive for them, easy tracking for me

and hey, those kids remembered the first ten amendments the rest of the year!

so there you go

break out the rubber stamps

 regardless of the age of the students

I'm excited because all too soon my "October" stamps will be making their debut on papers

oh my, sometimes it is the little things in life