The Complaint Box

My students love to complain. "He touched me", "He took my pencil", "Stephen said the B word" etc. Non-stop all day. So to deal with this immature and annoying behavior, I have a "Complaint Box" in my room. The box has a bunch of scraps of paper, and when a student is going to complain he/she writes it down on the paper and puts it in the box. At the end of the day I read all the complaints. This system works out well because if they are about to complain, I just say, "Put it in the box" or "Is this a complaint?" That triggers them to go write it down instead of saying it because if they do complain, then I move their clip down on the behavior chart. Plus they are forming sentences on their own and writing them down, which is always good.

Now the complaint box is amusing for a few reasons:
1. Most of my studnets cannot spell well. So most notes read something like, "Rob teld me the B wurld." Some are spelled so poorly I just give up.
2. When I read them all the studnets are quiet and watch my face to see what I'll do. I read (or in most cases pretend to read) them and make comments like, "really" or "wow, I'm surprised at you, Jack." That seems to satisfy the kids who wrote them enough.
3. My all-time favorite complaint so far this year is, "Aaron called me told me I'm a black kid." Hey, he spelled all the words correctly. Writing grade = A.