Student Contributor: Z. Winegar
The bell is near the teacher and when the teacher rings the bell, students will know to finish their last thought and to turn their voices off and keep their hands in their lap. This is helpful because it will ideally make transitions flow easier.
The tool should be used to help students with their transition to their next task. Students will know what their task is ahead of time so once they hear the bell they know to transition. An element to keep in mind is your classroom would have to be at a lower voice level so students could hear the bell. So collaborative work voices should be no higher than your average talking voice. Another element is this tool isn’t meant to interrupt students, I view it more as a wrap up what you are saying, then quiet down. I haven’t had personal experience with the bell, but the bell serves the same purpose as the chimes in Gus’ classroom.
This tool relates to the preventative phase because it should be introduced at the start of the year. Students learn about what the bell is and the expectations that come along with it. This tool is meant to create smooth transitions to help lower the likelihood of there being a behavior problem. It is also considered preventative because it occurs before the undesired behavior occurs. It could also be considered part of the corrective phase because you may have to use it as a tool that gets students back on track. However, it should be mainly used in the preventative phase. I think this tool aligns with student-directed and collaborative. On the teacher side of the collaborative, the teacher is deciding when to use it. It is student-directed because the tool has the best interest of the students at heart because it is their valued work time.
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Tool Source: Pinterest
For this tool, I was working with a group of about 70 7th grade students in a school in an urban area. This was an easy tool to implement into my classroom because it is a simple bell and students already know that when the teacher talks that they need to finish up their thoughts and return back to the teacher so implementing a sound for this transition was easy! I noticed success with this tool because before this my teacher was just using her voice to regain students attention and transition but now we use this so we don’t need to yell over the loud students. The students understand that when they hear the sound of the bell they need to refocus on the teacher. The only adjustment I would make is use a softer bell like chimes instead of the bell I used. The one I used was much more obnoxious than I would prefer.