A helpful tip: Serious Vs. Silly

Happy Tuesday! 

I hope all of you that started work today had a FABULOUS day.

I had some ideas to share with you all and I thought why not give it a name and make it a LINKY? Soooo...

Thanks for stopping by for...

This year I had a student who was having trouble during our whole group lesson time. Part of the problem is that he has quite a bit of language already. He still needs some ELL time, but he is more advanced than the other kids in his group.

I understood that he required more of a challenge during his work and I gave it to him. However, during instructional time I still wanted him to sit quietly and listen to what I was demonstrating. I didn't want him to continue to get in trouble and miss out on valuable instructional time. PLUS, and this is the more important one, I wanted him to stop disturbing his peers, who DID need every little bit of what I was teaching.

He was basically being VERY silly and giggly all the time. When I discussed him in my PLC group, another teacher suggested I make a Silly/ Serious sign so that the expectation was clear. This was brilliant!

The next day the class discussed what silly and serious meant. What it looks like and sounds like to be silly and what it looks like and sounds like to be serious. We talked about why it is important to be serious during whole group lessons and about how sometimes it is ok to be silly.  Demonstrations are VERY important for ELL kids, so we practiced this.

I let them know that I would help them learn when it was ok to be silly and when when have to be serious. Then I took their picture. Now, I don't know if you know this, but Kinder Kids LOVE to have their picture taken. We took several pictures with silly faces and several more with serious faces. I took the picture as a whole group because I did not want to single this particular student out. Not to mention that it is good practice for all my kids. 

So here is how it turned out.

I printed it up as two separate whole sheets. Then laminated and taped them together. Inserted a Popsicle stick and Tada! I added the word up top because I wanted to connect it to print, but you don't have to.

Best thing is that now all I have to do is show the sign and they know right away what kind of behavior is expected of them.

Just in case you were wondering we used our silly voices and faces to sing and echo. Occasionally when we share, I allow it to, but the rest of the time we are serious.

Because I love to share you can pick up a Serious or Silly words to go with your sign. Click here for your freebie.

Have any Teaching you wanna share? Feel free to link up below or share via a comment box.