When you're a teacher, you spend half of your time moaning at or about pupils who refuse to participate in class, and the other half moaning at or about pupils who won't stop participating in class and won't let anyone else get a look in ! When the opportunity came up on Blogmatch to review a set of Original Answer Buzzers from Learning Resources, I thought they could be just what I needed to kill two birds with one stone.
The box contains four brightly-coloured game-show style buzzers that make different sounds. The four noises - a honking horn, a boxing bell, a door bell and a boing sound - are all totally different so they are very easy to distinguish and the sounds are quite unexpected so they lead to much giggling when people press them. They have indeed managed to sort out both extremes of classroom behaviour - in the quiet classes, some of the kids are more enthusiastic to answer questions because they want to make their friends laugh by pushing the buzzers and in the classes where kids are always so eager to shout out answers that they don't put up their hands and all talk over each other, the idea of only being allowed to speak when you have the buzzer in your hand does manage to control some of the worst culprits. It does lead to a lot of giggling though, so it's not something I'd use all the time !
Outside of the classroom, they would also be a great addition to any quiz-type games or beat-the-clock challenges where you need to know who gets to the buzzer first to crank up the excitement and hilarity levels. You will need to stock up on lots of batteries though. Each buzzer takes 2 x AAA batteries and they are not included.
There is currently a competition on Learning Resources facebook page where you can win one of five sets of the Original Answer Buzzers. The closing date is 31st December 2012.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £17.94
for more information : http://www.learningresources.co.uk/product/answerbuzzers.do?code=BM-BUZZ12
Disclosure : I received a set of buzzers in order to write an honest review.
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This is a great idea and I shall pass on to my teaching colleagues at school! Also going to pop over to the competition too! :)
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