Ready to Listen: Necessity the Mother of Invention

Since I teach push in classes for 30-45 minutes to all primary classes, I tried this trick one day, and it worked. We have had a crop of especially unruly kindergarten students this year. I can only reiterate the expectations and take points from multiple children so many times before needing another solution. This day I showed my posters of “Ready Freddy” which normally work to redirect students, but this day the posters didn’t work as well as they needed to for silence. With the posters I said, ” I will count everyone who is sitting the right way on the carpet.” When I got to a student who wasn’t sitting the right way on the carpet, I would go back to counting at one. It went something like this. I would point to a student doing the right thing and say, “one”. Then I would follow with “two, three, four.” Each time I saw a student sitting correctly, I would continue counting. When a student stopped following directions, I would stop counting. I would continue in this fashion until I could count the whole class one by one. When I arrived at 20, for example, I would lead the while class in a silent cheer (scream) where students act like they are yelling and waving their hands in the air yet it would be silent. I found counting students who were behaving would calm the class. I hope this works for you!