Student Contributor: L. Welling
Silent Thumbs Up is a method for communicating whether or not students have completed a task or assignment. It is a great way to allow students to communicate without disturbing others by talking.
Silent Thumbs Up is a preventative measure used to for communication. It is used when prompted by the teacher or when students want to show they have completed the task without looking like they have a question. Silent Thumbs Up is a raised thumb in the air that can be used during independent work time and partner or group work time. When implementing this tool, it is crucial to decide if it is done because of: teacher prompting, students taking responsibility to communicate their own progress, or both. It is important to teach students the how, when and why of the tool. When using this tool, I asked students to give me a silent thumbs up when they had completed the problem or task they were working on.
I placed this tool in the preventative phase because it is a way to prevent students from talking or distracting others between tasks. Students will often take advantage of any down time to talk to friends. Silent Thumbs Up helps the teacher to get a read on student progress during lessons and activities so that informed decisions can be made about whether it’s an appropriate time to move on to the next task. Silent Thumbs Up could also be placed under in the supportive phase because it is used to create a learning environment where students get the time that they need to complete what they are doing without major distractions. Silent Thumbs Up is placed in the collaborative category because it is a joint effort and responsibility of both the teacher and students.
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Tool Source: The idea for this tool came from a former teacher of mine.
I tested out this classroom management tool with my 6-8th grade students. There is a total of about 30 students if you were to combine all 5 of our classes. This tool was very easy to prepare, as a lot of our students already raise their hands when they are finished with a task so instead, we had them put a thumb up, so we knew they were finished this a task. Our class is a reading intervention class, so a lot of the class is individual work so this worked very well for students. The students understood the role well as it was similar to raising their hands. I noticed that there were less distractions from other students looking around at those that were raising their hands. One adjustment that could be made for smaller class sizes, is instead of having students raise their thumb up in the air, just have students put a thumb up on their desk to indicate that they are finished with a task so that it would eliminate everyone knowing and distracting everyone with a hand in the air.
I implemented Silent Thumbs Up, in my 8th-grade math classroom, with 15-25 students each period, located in an urban area. This tool was very quick to implement, and only took my students a few tries before it became natural to them. It also was something that felt age-appropriate for my 8th graders. I first implemented it by explicitly asking them to “put a silent thumbs up when you are completed with the task” for the first few times. After a while, I was able to just say “thumbs up”, and students understood the expectation, as students quickly understood their role in this strategy. It took minimal time to become a normal expectation in our classroom. One thing that I was not expecting to come from this strategy was for this to also boost engagement as an entire class, as it grabbed students’ attention. This was a very exciting thing for my mentor teacher and me. One thing we could add to this strategy is to use it after explaining directions. After a while of doing this, I noticed overall improved on-task behaviors and fewer questions about expectations. I plan to use this tool in my own classroom!
My placement is a 4th-grade class, there are 23 students and they are currently in a suburban school. This tool was easy to implement. The students in my class are not used to these kinds of nonverbal ways of communicating, so at first I thought they might think it was weird or a silly thing to do or that they would just refuse to do it. I wanted to use this tool because I think it is a great way to prevent behaviors like blurting which leads to students getting off task. Before I tried the silent thumbs up, I explained to students that when I put my thumb up in the air and ask a question, I would like for them to silently put theirs up too, so that I could see how many people completed a task. At first, when I used the silent thumbs up, I had a few students who still blurted. But, with repetition, the class successfully used the silent thumbs-up tool. I noticed that there were fewer opportunities for students to get derailed from blurting out if they were done with something or not and the transitions between certain steps in lessons went a lot smoother.
I am in a 5th grade class of 28 students in a rural area. There was no prep for this tool and it was very easy to teach and use. I let students know that they would give me a thumbs up in the air to let me know they were ready to move on. They caught on to their role right away and there was no confusion with its use. This tool was a form of formative assessment for me. I gathered that those students who would raise their thumb more quickly than others were those who were understanding the content. Those students who were frequently the last to put their thumbs in the air were those who were still working and potentially needed more support. Once it came to independent work, I would check on those students who were last to offer support. I think one way to make this tool even better would be to ask students to put two thumbs in the air if they got it and think they can help someone else. This would be another way to assess understanding of students who are quick to raise their thumbs and potentially help with setting up partners for future activities within the same content area.