I don’t know how everyone else feels about tattle tales, but nothing is more time consuming or annoying than kids who take it upon themselves to solve alllllll of the playground quarrels. I applaud students who know right from wrong and want to be treated with respect, but tattle tales have become a huge issue in my classroom.
Every day after recess and lunch it takes about ten minutes just for the kids to calm down and tell me everything that happened on the playground. Sure if something exciting happened, or if someone is hurt, I need to know these things. But when Susie tells Mary that she isn’t her BFF anymore or Ben tells the whole class that Mark is in love with Josie, these issues can cause a real interruption to my teaching time.
Duh Duh Duh Daaaa.....the Tattle Tale Monster moves into my classroom and saves us all from wasted time!
I got this fantastic idea from a picture I found on Pinterest (my new obsession which consumes far too much of my day)! The Tattle Tale Monster is a great way to talk to your students about what a real problem is (like someone who is hurt) and what is a tattle tale and can be worked out on its own. The idea is that the Tattle Tale Monster sits on a table in our classroom where students can write their tattle tale onto a piece of paper and then feed it to the Monster. If, at the end of the day, this is still an issue they need to talk to me about, we can talk about it after school. My hope is that the kids will discover that their tattle tale is not really worth the effort it will take to write it down and talk to me about. Perhaps it will motivate students to work it out amongst themselves.
I introduced our new classmate Tattle Tale Monster to my class yesterday and the kids loved him! So far he has been a hit and has been well feed. We will see if he is still as popular by the end of the week!
