Student Contributor: G. Eden
Maintaining voice level is hard for the classroom, especially during partner work. These cards are reminders of what our voice level should be while in partner groups.
This is a tool that will help remind students of the voice level they should keep during working together. Sometimes, when students work together it is hard to manage the whole classroom and focus on everyone’s noise level and behavior. With these cards, you can tell students what level they should be talking at and they set the card on their desk which helps serve as a reminder for them. This allows the students to be responsible for their actions because they have the expectation clear in front of them.
I placed this tool in the supportive phase because the tool helps support the wanted learning environment. I didn’t put it in the preventative phase because it isn’t something that you do before students arrive to make the environment better but it is something that we would do during the lesson. I think that this fits right in the middle of the continuum of the Theory of Influence. I put it in collaboration because both the teacher and students are working to make this strategy work. The teacher establishes the expectation that voices should be a certain level but the card reminder helps students hold responsibility for their actions which gives us our student-centered side.
More Information –
Tool Source: Online Article
I implemented this management strategy in my third-grade classroom, situated in a suburban neighborhood. There are 20 students in my class. It was easy to prepare the chart and teach the concept of voice levels to students, and they grasped it with a few examples almost immediately. However, I adjusted this strategy to make it much more student centered. I gave students the role of deciding what voice level would be appropriate before an activity commenced, and afterwards students reflected on whether they thought they spoke at the decided upon voice level. Students immediately understood their role alongside the procedure involved with voice levels, and it helped create a culture of students being self-managers and self-reflective. If students thought they were too loud during their reflection, we held a discussion on what strategies we could use next time to promote success in speaking at the agreed upon voice level. Giving students the power to decide and reflect helped not only with the voice level but made them more responsible, which I believe to be more advantageous than the teacher deciding the appropriate voice level.