Find the lull: “Observe the noise pattern” as classroom noise ebbs and flows, says Marianne Kearney-Brown. “At the next lull, speak in a quiet voice and say, ‘I need your attention’ or ‘Group work time is over.’ It worked amazingly well.”
Countdown with a twist: Do a countdown, but “add something weird in the middle. Example: ‘5… 4… 3… octopus… 1,’” high school English teacher Marcus Luther advises. Math teacher Joaquin Colon uses a similar approach with his 10th and 11th graders in the Bronx: “OK, let’s bring it back in 5... 4... 731.8…” The response is immediate quiet and a “Wait, what?” from students.
Positive reinforcement: Try verbally acknowledging students who are quiet. “For a particularly rowdy group of grade nines, I pulled out my preschool teacher method of ‘John is ready. Joanne is ready,’” Denise Yellen Ganot notes. “They scrambled to hear me say their names. Can’t believe this worked on them.”
Deep breathing: “If you can hear my voice, take a deep breath! And another deep breath!” That’s how one high school ELA teacher says she gets kids back on track while sneaking calming breaths into her classroom management. It takes a minute or two, but the bonus, says Leila L, is that the breathing exercises “calm me down too.”
Sound cues: High school teachers, we discovered, use a wide array of sounds as attention-getters. “I had a tambourine I would use to get their attention,” one teacher posted on Reddit. “It was playful and fun without being juvenile.” Sharriah Buche Armstrong prefers YouTube sound effects, while other teachers swear by class doorbells. Julia Calderon has different rings for different occasions, like “instant quiet,” clean up, and pack up.
Choose your own: Several teachers let students choose the settle-down tactics. For instance, when one high school teacher had a “super chatty class,” they asked students what they needed to quiet down. The class "looked at each other and said, ‘Waterfall.’” The popular call-and-response from elementary school “worked every time.”