Eastern Washington University
The community circle is a tool where teachers have students sit alongside them in a circle and talk about a prompt that the teacher gives. Students then pass around a certain object and share their thoughts and feelings about that prompt. This tool is helpful in a classroom because it gives the class the opportunity to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas about the topic at hand.
Brain Breaks are short mental pauses lasting no longer than 2 minutes that are designed to facilitate focus and attentiveness. For a variety of reasons including long lessons, impending holidays, or upcoming tests, students can collectively begin to lose that focus. Brain Breaks are intended to be fun and stimulating by offering a sporadic change from the norm (and sometimes mundane).
Proximity interference is when the teacher moves closer to a student who is beginning to get off-task. This tool can be helpful because they are not disruptive to the rest of the class.
Inspired by the book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, Australia is a get away corner for students who seem to be having a rough day. This tool helps students regroup to be able to focus again.
Silent signals are a few predetermined hand signals/sign language symbols that students are able to use to ask permission from the teacher for simple tasks such as going to the bathroom or getting a drink. This procedure helps to prevent distraction in the classroom and allows for daily tasks to be carried out more smoothly.
Cross the River can be used to help students build community and respect for one another. Because students are asked to collaborate and work together to formulate a solution to the problem presented to them with limited resources, this activity will help students establish relationships with each other and move towards being able to work as a team.
This tool helps with noise level, green being normal volume and red being quiet. It is helpful to maintain appropriate noise volume and helps students to be aware of what it should be.
There are 3 goals of creating rules in the Responsive Classroom approach to discipline. They are 1) establish guidelines and expectations for positive behavior, 2) create a sense of order and safety- both physical and psychological in the classroom, and 3) teach children the purpose of rules by connecting the rules to learning goals.
The wrinkled heart starts as a simple cut out of a heart and when negative things affect the heart it becomes more and more wrinkled. It is a very helpful tool in the classroom because it gives the students a visual representation of what hurtful words can do.
Quiet coyote is used to get the classes attention when they are working on an assignment and it may be loud in the classroom. It is an easy signal to show that their eyes need to be on the teacher, their ears are open and listening, and their mouths are closed. This is used if you need to tell the class something quick and then they get back to work. This tool is not really a transition tool.
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