Season 2, Episode 4
3 Easy Steps To Get A Noisy Class Quiet Right Now!
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Welcome to Episode 4!!!
Hello, hello, Caylee here, and I'm doing this one solo again.
And it's going to be quick, I'm trying out a different format for today's episode, give you the tips and get all my way…because I know you're busy!!
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Today, I'm sharing three easy steps with you so that you can get your kiddos quiet whenever you need to.
In fact, these three steps are actually going to help make your classroom quieter all the time.
And I'm going to give you some million dollar tips that you can start doing tomorrow. Super easy, super effective. And they're going to make it so much easier for you to control the volume in your classroom.
Let's go…
Okay, step number one:
Dim the lights.
These might sound like simple steps, and you might think they're not going to work. But you got to trust me, in my course, I go into detail about how to set the mood before your students even arrive, one of the biggest things you need to do is dim those lights.
If you have those overhead fluorescent lights, turn them off immediately.
They are so terrible, maybe you can't turn all of them off, but at least hit one of those switches to shut down half of that room. 😂
I always spent so much time before the school year redoing the lighting in my classroom, I would never have those above fluorescent lights on, I instead would hang Christmas lights around the entire perimeter of the room.
And then I would hang these lights from IKEA or Amazon!
They're just inexpensive and lightweight — they're a long cord with a light bulb at the end. And then they would have different covers.
I would hang those anywhere that I needed a little bit of extra light or you know around the art center near my teepee…
(In the photo above you can see them hanging on the far right side of the pic!)
I promise you, Dimming the lights will make a huge impact on the volume levels.
Once you dim those lights, you welcome your kids in the morning into a calm and quiet classroom with cozy lighting.
So instead of them just feeling like they have to start yelling are going crazy.
👉🏼 You are setting the tone.
👉🏿 You're telling them what level to be at.
You are using a soft, calm voice and showing them “This is where you should be on the volume level.”
✨And if you start out quiet, it's much easier to keep it there.
If you let them come in like wild animals, you'll have to do a lot to get them back down.
So just start down low.
Let them match your tone.
Let them feel your happy and calm demeanor.
And then they'll relax and they'll feel calm too.
If you've never tried playing calm meditation music when kids enter in the morning, you have to try it.
I'll put a link in the show notes to my playlist on YouTube with beautiful calm music that you can pick from just press play and then welcome your kiddos into a spa like peaceful happy place. And they will follow your lead.
Even families that are dropping their kids off will be impressed—They will kind of pause and say, “Oh, this is nice.”
Everyone will feel the difference right away.
So that's step number one, get those fluorescent lights off.
If you don't have a lot of windows you can add in extra sources of light —
My go to is always Christmas lights!
I'll show the IKEA lights that I was talking about that easy to mount lightweight lights that make it easy to put wherever you need them.
And just you're gonna set the tone.
Give the kids something to match when they enter the classroom in the morning.
Okay, step number two:
2. Get Their Attention In A Fun But CALM Way!
I know that some teachers like to do those little chants where it's like I say “peanut butter.” You say “jelly!”
Peanut butter — Jelly!
Peanut butter — Jelly!
... This is my nightmare.
Why are we yelling?
I get it. It's kind of catchy. But it's just it's really doing the opposite of what we're trying to do. It's amping everybody up. It's getting us into a yelling chant battle and I prefer to do it another way. So step two is my favorite way to get the kids attention in a fun but calm way.
And a lot of the times more is better. Everyone thinks they need multiple ways to get their kids attention.
We don’t need to remember 10 ways to get their attention.. THIS ONE WAY will work every time!
Especially because you can change it up each time.
But you're still just remembering the same thing that you're going to do.
It's called “Match Me” …
You may have heard me talk about it before, but you basically just start doing something, and then you say, match me.
And that's your way of inviting the kids to do what you're doing. If you have kids that are spread out around the room, when you start it, you'll have to use bigger movements.
So if your kids are at centers, and they're all spread out, you'll have to be a little more obvious to get their attention, maybe you raise your hands up and pat your head. Or maybe you start doing arm circles. And all you have to say is match me.
But if they're all right there with you at the carpet, you can start with some less obvious movements: you can gently tap your nose and say, match me, you can wiggle your fingers, you could stomp your feet, it doesn't matter what you pick to do.
You can do whatever you want, as long as it's something that your kids can do too… because once they notice you doing something, they're going to start doing exactly what you're doing.
And then you're going to change your movement.
And they're going to change and follow and do exactly what you're doing.
So I usually start out with something bigger. And then as I go, and I as I capture the attention of more kids, my movements will get smaller.
And by the end, I'm doing something very subtle, I'm blinking my eyes and saying “match me,” or I'm shrugging my shoulders and saying “match me.”
And then once everyone is following along and doing the movements, and looking at you and giving you their attention, then you're going to be able to move on to step number three, which I'll tell you in one second.
But just so we're clear, you're going to start out with a bigger movement and say, “match me.” '
And any kids that see you are going to start doing it. And then you're going to change your movement. And maybe you're also sort of walking around if your kids are at centers to try to get more kids to pick up on what's happening. And you're going to do another movement, and you're gonna say, match me, and all the kids that say you are going to do what you're doing. And as they catch on, it might take three, four different movements, especially if you were walking around the room, because it was during center time that you're trying to get their attention.
But if you're just having them line up, and then you're standing at the front of the line, it should only take two or three movements to get them to all be doing what you're doing.
And then you're going to do step three.
Okay, well, who are you ready to step three, let's just do it.
3. You're Going To Whisper
You're going to whisper the directions.
**Fun fact: I always talk in the quietest possible voice level that I can get the point across with. And it's usually so much lower than you would think.
Step three, whispering is really something that I think you should start doing a lot more of the time, I pretty much would whisper everything I ever said to my kids.
Why? Well, do you know what happens when you whisper?
You're forcing students to tune in and pay attention.
And listen.
And the beautiful thing about whispering is, the more you do it, the better your kids will get with listening.
After a while it's just going to become normal.
You talk very softly, and your kids listen to what you say.
You don't have to be getting into these volume battles, where you're getting louder because they're loud. And then they get louder than you and then all of a sudden you're screaming!!
No, no, no, no. Take it down, way down.
Right from the beginning.
Your kids will get better at eye contact.
They'll get better at calming their bodies and focusing on the person who's talking.
Whispering sounds like such a simple little thing—But it is so powerful when you use it in your classroom.
You've probably heard me say it before, but one year I had a visitor in my classroom and they said, “Oh my God, it feels like I just walked into a spa.”
It's so funny, but I feel like it was such a great compliment. I don't go into spas much. But I know they're really calming and peaceful. I love to play that babbling brook spa music with the gentle flute in the background and really take the spa field to the next level in my classroom.
Once you put together these three easy steps from this episode, and you try them all with your kids, you're going to see that your classroom is going to be kind of like a spa too.
And it's going to be magical. I hope they'll try it out.
Let me know how it goes.
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A few last things real quick. I'm doing this Quick Tips episode. Because the last episode I did Episode Three on scrapbooks took me hours and hours and hours and hours.
Go check out all the photos of my student scrapbooks!! I spent so much time getting tons of photos so that you could be inspired and get excited about all the fun things that you can do with scrapbooks.
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