Student Contributor: J. Holien
This is a verbal “call and response” tool. Teacher says, “Hey Hey!” then students respond with “Listen Up!” *Clap Clap*. This tool is used to get students’ attention.
This tool should be used to get students’ attention when students are working loudly, like in groups or on a social project where they are doing a lot of talking. It prevents the teacher from having to yell directions over the class and then having students not hear the directions. This tool should be taught and practiced a lot in the beginning of the year so students understand what their roll is and how they should respond when using this tool. I have used this tool in my 5th grade class and students all respond well and right away when I use this tool.
I believe this tool is a preventative tool because it prevents distractions when a teacher, or someone else, is trying to give instruction to the class. It prevents students from mishearing instruction because everyone was talking. This tool connects to the corrective phase because it does stop everyone from talking but it’s usually not used to correct a behavior, just to prevent misbehavior when a teacher is talking. I think this tool aligns with the collaborative and teacher directed theory because students have a big role in this tool, but it’s used by a teacher to direct students’ attention back to them.
More Information –
Tool Source: Mentor Teacher
I used this tool with 31 fifth graders in a rural school. I really enjoyed using this tool and the students responded to it very well! I used this tool to gather the students’ attention when they were completing partner/group work and the classroom volume level was pretty loud. I used this to not only remind them of expectations for the activity itself, but also because I had realized I forgot to mention a couple small but important pieces of their instructions at the beginning of the lesson. I really liked this tool because it allowed me to speak to the whole class while they were working on a task and allowed me to gather their attention all at once. I have seen many of these call and response tools used in my schooling and as long as the students know the expectations of them, they respond to the teacher’s use of the tool very well. I plan to use this tool or a similar one in my future classroom as one of my many classroom management tools.
I used this strategy in a 2nd grade classroom of 17 students in a rural school. I did not use this exact phrase when implementing this strategy, however this strategy can be used with many different sayings. When I first entered the placement, I was unsure of how to get the entire classes attention while they were working. My mentor teacher was able to start talking and they would recognize her voice and knew to be quiet however, this was not the same for me. I began using the attention getter “class, class.” They respond, “yes, yes.” I had heard my mentor teacher doing a few times and I wanted to give it a shot. The strategy worked wonders and the class immediately gave me their attention. If every student does not respond I say, “Oh, try again. Class, class” and then every student understands they need to look up and give me their attention. I now use this daily. Some similar phrases I’ve seen in videos are “Red Robin” “Yum”, “Alright stop” “Collaborate and Listen” and “Hakuna” “Matata”.