Teaching is my passion! I feel the need to start off by saying that because I am surrounded by people that like to teach, but it's not their passion. They often say things to me about the time I spend preparing my lessons. I take pride in what I create. My goal is to engage every type of student every single day no matter what specific topic I'm presenting to them. That means my class has to be fun...and sometimes...having fun is loud.
My classroom is noisy. As a first year teacher, I remember so many mentor teachers drilling how important having perfect classroom management was. It stressed me out. Every day I thought I had these great lessons prepared but I was so afraid of the noise level that I knew my students weren't fully engaged. I even had nightmares about being evaluated by administration and none of my students would quiet down. This was serious! I actually had an administrator tell me that I said "SHHHH" twelve times during one observation my first semester in the classroom. WOW! I had been cursed by the ineffective first year "Shoooooshing" strategy. I decided from that day on that I would no longer care about the noise level in my classroom as long as students were learning. Educators like to call this "controlled chaos". My students know that in my class, they will have the opportunity to make noise, move around, compete, think out loud, participate in discussions, and be heard. My classroom management has never been better. If you keep students busy bell-to-bell with fun, engaging activities, your relationship with them will develop. Having students relationships is the number one key to successful classroom management. I recently had my students practice the scientific method by making home-made duck calls. Yes, it was loud. Yes, I heard more than 120 students' duck calls by the end of the day. Yes, you could say it was annoying. But, I knew they were all practicing forming hypotheses, identifying variables, and writing scientific conclusions in the process. So...noise is okay! Click on the picture "A Duck Call Experiment" or click HERE to see the lesson.
4 Comments
Erica Praga
4/1/2017 07:03:33 pm
I have a noisy classroom too! I just got my eval, and one of the dings against me was that the kids are not constantly in their seats (I let them get up and get pencils, tissues, etc) without raising their hands first. They are allowed to talk and offer ideas and answers. I do some moderation, but mostly they are on their own and must follow social conventions!
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4/1/2017 09:07:35 pm
I love "controlled chaos"! Keeping students engaged can get noisy, but as long as everyone is learning and staying on the task at hand, a little noise can be good! I know for me when I was still in the classroom I had to teach my students the difference between acceptable noise (learning, discussion, collaborating) and not ok noise (off task, goofing off, yelling, etc.). Even 3rd graders did well with a few reminders here and there!
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This is totally our kinder classroom! Students are free to move and get whatever they need without asking. They are encouraged to take math tools off shelves, to take art materials they need and to take things off walls when they need them (sight words, letters or numbers). I love it! We sometimes have to have a discussion about appropriate noise level because it gets so loud that they are no longer speaking to each other, but yelling! It works for us though and I couldn't see doing it any other way!
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4/2/2017 04:53:55 pm
I had to chuckle when I read that an administrator had counted "Shhh" 12 times during an observation! I always had a noisy kindergarten classroom but when my principal would come in for an observation, she spent the entire time saying "Shhh!" During my last year, she still had to come in to observe me. In my pre-observation paperwork, I got up the nerve to tell her that the room would be noisy so please do not "shhh" the kids! She was really amazed when I told her that she spends most of her time in the room saying that! She didn't even realize it!
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