Often times we expect students to "just know" that when someone is talking their voice should be off or what a quiet voice means. What I have found out over the last few years is that we need to create our own set of guidelines for noise in our classroom and make them transparent for different parts of the day.
This is where our classroom Noise-O-Meter comes into play! This week, we had several class meetings over what noise would sound like on a 0-4 scale. Here is what we came up with!
This is where our classroom Noise-O-Meter comes into play! This week, we had several class meetings over what noise would sound like on a 0-4 scale. Here is what we came up with!
The Noise-O-Meter also helps me be aware of how often our noise-o-meter is set to a level zero or a level 1. The first year I used the noise-o-meter, I noticed that I had it set to "whisper voices" for a lot of the day and that's not fair! I wasn't setting kids up to be successful if I was asking them to be quiet all day. Now, I am very aware of when I am expected students to be quiet and for how long. Together, we all know what those times of day are and we trust that there are going to be many opportunities for various levels of noise throughout our day!
The Noise-O-Meter will be controlled by a student as one of our classroom jobs. They will set the noise-o-meter to the right number at different learning times and if they notice that we are getting a little louder than the number we set, they ring the wind chime to signal our brains and bodies that we need to quiet down. | |