I’m regularly amazed by how much I don’t know…
My colleague and co-author, Katie Hull, is moving to middle school this year, and she attended some trainings last week. She told me that one of the things she learned about and liked a lot was a “noise-level chart.”
Apparently, this is very old-news to elementary school teachers who, by the look of the zillions you can find on Pinterest, have been using them for years.
But I don’t think it’s as well known to high school educators, at least the two of us!
Using something like this could be very helpful in my IB Theory of Knowledge classes, which are very large, and we’re all packed into a very small classroom.
Introducing the chart, practicing it, and then explaining what level the class noise level should be prior to each activity (or, even better, asking them what they think the level should be), could be a very helpful strategy.
Again, it’s probable that most readers of this blog already know about this strategy. I wish somebody had told me about it earlier!
Here’s what I’ve come up with for my classroom – tell me how I can make it better, please:
Looks good! It has been very useful for me!