A Bad Case of the "That's not fairs"

How many times a day do you hear that one?  Ever since I started my leveled reading takehome books; I seem to be hearing more and more of it!  The higher the level, the more awesome the duct tape on the binding becomes: ie, if you can get up to a level j or k...you get super mario brothers duct tape or * justin beiber* duct tape.  Anyways, the "That's not fair" it's been a flying!  I decided to take a band aid to it.  Wha? 

  So, I started out by asking if anyone had a boo-boo on their arm.  Amazingly, we had someone with a cat scratch.  Miss Curtis had a fix for that....Angry birds band-aids!  I asked if anyone else had a boo-boo; someone had a paper cut on their finger.....WAIT, I have to be FAIR--band-aid on your arm.  Another one, cut on the knee.....WAIT, I have to be fair--band-aid on your arm.  ETC, etc, until we got through everyone; and Miss Curtis had to be fair, so everyone got a band-aid on their arm, no matter where their boo-boo was.  This fell into an awesome discussion about how silly it was for me to put a band-aid on someone's arm, who had a cut on their knee.  Does it make sense, NO!  This point was really driven home to my kiddos.  My point to this whole discussion was, in school, being fair doesn't always mean that everyone gets exactly the same thing.  I got them to see that being fair meant that everyone got what they needed to be successful.  We're not always going to get exactly the same materials, or learning method, but I will ALWAYS make sure you get what you need to be a better student. 
Like magic, I haven't heard a peep out of the "That's not fair" crowd today.  This was a really effective lesson, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is working with leveled groups of any kind. 
Happy Monday :)