There are 13 days until the end of the school year and I have yet to get my class to be able to stay quiet during transitions. Anytime we are switching activities, passing out papers, collecting papers, stopping learning time for a nanosecond, there is talking – and not whispering but full, loud conversations – usually in 
Arabic or French (the home language of most of my students) going on in my room. Then, recently, I came upon a solution – let them sing!
All year long, I have been teaching my kids little songs, some are related to our curriculum, some are to build rhyming and phonemic awareness, and some are just playground songs that my students aren’t aware of because on our playground, they sing in French or Arabic, lol! So, the other day, I decided I couldn’t take the transition noise one more minute, and I just called out “Miss Mary Mack”, and while I was passing out papers, all of the kids sang the song. Now, this didn’t make my room any quieter, but it kept them all focused on one thing, and when the song was done, I was able to pick up teaching without any wait time – amazing! So, we are spending the last 13 days of school singing, and it puts us ALL in a better mood!
How are you managing those restless munchkins at this time of the year?
Super idea Heidi! I have found that a challenging part of subbing, transitioning from one thing to the next. Tough to get them to hush and then be ready for something else. I'll keep that in mind next week and let them sing familiar songs they all know!
ReplyDeleteMusic is magical! It's one of the little tricks up my sleeve. Sometimes we have soft, background music, sometimes it's rowdy music just to let the kids burn off some steam, and sometimes it's just happy music to keep them all in a good mood. My students really respond to it!
ReplyDeleteSally from ElementaryMatters
If your kids like singing "Miss Mary Mack", try teaching them the hand clapping that goes with it. My ELL's loved learning it and I found them practicing it out on the playground!
ReplyDeleteHere's video of children performing the rhyme and hand clapping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ssH5pwNNXI
I also use a slower version to teach the actions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Xcw3T-vQs