Traffic lights

Tried a new noise management method in the afternoon yesterday which worked really well, so I thought I'd record it here. I explained very explicitly to the children that for their PSHCE work, they could sit with a friend provided the noise level stayed low. Once they sat down, I drew a green traffic light on the board and explained that the current level of noise merited a green. I explained that if the noise level went up, I would have to move to an orange traffic light and that would be their warning to get quieter again. If we continued at that level of noise, I would have to move up to red, which would mean that we would move back to our literacy places and work in silence.

This actually worked fantastically well. The first couple of times I needed to move up to an orange light, I drew attention it it, but after that, children started to notice me moving up to the board to give an orange and quickly hushed other people back down again so that I was quickly able to go back to green - once today, they had gone right back down before I'd even managed to draw the orange light on the board! (I stopped and praised them for that.) This morning in literacy, one of the girls actually asked me if we could use the traffic lights again because she thought it helped her. I'll definitely be using this more often!

It's also benifited me using clapping signals when I want them to come back from partner talk or whatever instead of using voice for that and claps just for when they're getting out of hand. Using it in the more general situations (and praising them when they are able to come straight back using it) means that they're more primed for what it means when I use it in situations of too much noise.