At a professional development last year, we had a "Parking Lot" hanging on the wall where people at the meeting could place questions if they did not want to ask them in front of the entire audience. I decided to use this in our classroom. We use it for a couple of different things. Every morning when students come in, they have a bell ringer posted on the Smart Board and it's usually a review math question because that is our first subject each day. It's a great formative assessment tool for me, because I can quickly see who has mastered yesterday's content and who needs some more guided instruction. The second way we use the parking lot is for students to ask questions they have about anything we've talked about during the day that they don't want to ask in front of the class. There have been a lot of great questions asked so far and it has sparked some great conversations!
