Like it or not, my students think that when I am trying to teach them something, I am just holding them back from the building time they desperately want to have. What I say isn’t that important… just let us build.

Then we find ourselves in a less-than-ideal situation… I have to stop people from doing ‘what they want’ and reexplain the directions. My directions are open ended and they get freedom to build after they complete some basic steps, but it puts us in a conflict daily in some cases.

So I need to change the structure of the class to pre-teach this problem away. Here is my idea:
Each class has a ‘Brain-time’ and a ‘Build-time’. Every single day will have quick activity that my students need to prove they have mastered before they can move to the build time. Writing procedures is definitely on the table.

Solving this problem would be a huge step – no more disappointment as I have to re-explain the instructions again and again.

Here goes nothing!