Classroom Management

Room 2 is made up of 25 students. Of those 25 students, only 9 of them are girls and the rest are boys. This means sitting still on the mat for a period longer than 5 minutes can be quite challenging. To combat this I have started using a timer. I put the timer on for 5 minutes and I don't keep the students any longer than that five minutes. The knowledge that they will be able to leave in a specific period of time seems to be working. My goal would be to work that time up little by little until they are able to sit without a timer.

Monitoring noise level inside the classroom and gaining the WHOLE classes attention has been another area I have been working on. Again, the large majority of high energy boys has made me think about the way in which I do this. I started using a bell or anything that meant I didn't have to raise my voice over them, I even tried a drum for a day (it didn't work). My mentor teacher suggested I try doing it with "no bells or whistles" and see how they react. I swapped out my bell for a "one, two, fold-away" chant which appealed to my whole class because they got to chant it back, it had the added bonus of the fact all students then had to fold their arms away. I kept chanting "one, two fold-away" until every student had their hands folded away. I made it clear that I would know people were listening when their arms were folded. This quickly became the expectation and in a few days, I was seeing a huge improvement. The key for me was being patient and waiting for every student. Setting the expectation and waiting for it to be met. I found if I was letting one little thing go that it escalated quickly from there.
HUGE TAKEAWAY - No bells and whistles, while it might work for some teachers in some classrooms, my class (boy heavy) reacted far better to my voice and the very clear expectations the chant sets.

Update: We have recently heard a new chant, "hands-on top," and the students chant back saying "that means stop." It seems to have the same positive impact on students but they seem to like it more. Added bonus, you can very clearly see they have stopped what they are doing and they are paying attention.