Using Rock, Paper, Scissors for Classroom Management

It's important for children to be able to have the skills to monitor their behavior and solve disagreements. It's not unusual for children to want an adult to solve their interpersonal problems for them, but what they really need is an adult to teach them a strategy to use to solve the problem on their own. Strategies like, "Let's roll a die to see who will have the first turn" or "Whomever can throw the ball the highest gets to play with it first".

One strategy my students always enjoyed was playing "rock, paper, scissors" but many of them had difficulty making the hand gestures and many more had trouble with the timing (and not changing the gesture according to what the other player is doing). Using a card deck to play the game solves these problems.

The Rock, Paper, Scissors card deck is available for free at our Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can use the cards in several ways. The teacher can keep copies of the cards that the students can access when they need to solve a problem or each child can keep a set in his/her desk. We hope they help you empower your students to solve problems on their own! The beginning of the year is a great time to start teaching them how.