Voice Posters

This post is all because of Hadar's inspirations. You see she is hosting a Classroom management linky party and she wrote about her Voice Poster. That made me want to share mine. :)

At first I was not happy because I have all of my classroom materials packed up and put away for the move. Then I realized that I brought all my posters and bulletin boards home for safe keeping this summer. That is a lie, I really brought them home to sort them all out and decide what I want and where I want it in my class next year. Aren't I OCD?

What did that mean? Well, it means that I have my voice posters here with me. So I had to go dig them out. here you can see I have them tucked under an old fashioned typewriter table.

 Sorry about the bad picture. It was taken from my iPhone and I had poor lighting.

I have 3 of these suckers. One of the best purchases I have made. I have my stuff sorted by pocket charts, items that go in the pocket charts and posters, bulletin board decorations and big books, and the last one has seasonal decoratives. So I had to find the one with posters.

I did and pulled out both of them. That is right I have 2 voice posters. Why? Well, the first one, posted below is part of our school wide Behavior Management support system, BIST. I will post more about it at a later date. See below.

What I like about this poster is that it helps me to introduce different kinds of voices to my students. As you all know I teach K and 1st ELL and a lot of the time my students arrive with NO notion of voice control. It is one of the first things we learn when we start the year. As you can see I use a clothes pin on the right to show the kids what kind of voice they are allowed to use, for easy referencing. On the left I added sticky notes that reference the kind of voice with a number, this is important for the second poster.

The second poster, posted below is one that the students and I make together during the first few day of our Writers Workshops.

By now the students and I have talked about voice volumes. We brainstorm the the different kinds of voices, and where we use those voices. IE: No voice= Hallway, Quiet voice= writing time and library, Regular voice= workstations, lunch, and talking buddies, Loud voice= playground, walking home, gym, out side and danger (as in "stranger danger" not during fires). I arrange them like a bar graph, which seems to help my ELL students. BTW, these can vary at your school or classroom. Then I give my students a small piece of paper and make them illustrate an area. I assign the area, because my first year I had a WHOLE bunch of students draw the playground and I had no lunch rooms. You will see I have the same sticky notes from the first poster for continuity, and also use a close pin and arrow to denote the kind of voice.

With these two posters in my room, which I have to reference very little after the 2nd month of school, I rarely have to remind my students of their voice volumes. Don't misunderstand, I do have cases in which I do have remind them they are too loud, but for the most part tey do pretty well.

I hope this helps you. I know that while I was typing it all out I thought of a few things I might do differently next year. I'll update you if I do change anything.

Don't forget to check out Hadar's Classroom management linky party. To get there click on the button below.