When you hear a teacher shushing students, it’s a good sign things aren’t going well.
Behind tight shoulders, tired eyes, and index finger poised over puckered lips, you’ll find a teacher struggling to keep his or her head above water.
Shushing students to quiet them down is associated with shaky-at-best classroom management, chronically distracted students, and a mountain of stress.
And because it becomes progressively less effective the more you do it, shushing promises more and more frustration as the school year rolls on.
Though not as self-sabotaging as yelling or scolding, shushing similarly makes teachers less likeable with students.
It also makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Follow the steps below and you’ll never feel the need to shush, hush, or plead for silence again.
1. Decide
Before starting any activity, decide the voice level you want from your students. It’s important you consider this ahead of time. After all, if you don’t know what you want, your students won’t know either.
2. Model
Gather your students around you and model precisely the voice level you expect. Make your modeling exercise as detailed and realistic as you can. Your students need to see and experience what you want before it makes sense to them.
3. Practice
Ask your students to turn to the student(s) next to them and discuss their favorite movie or other topic using the voice level you modeled. Have them practice and prove to you they understand what you expect.
4. Observe
Good teachers observe a lot to make sure their expectations are being met. Start your activity and monitor their voice level closely—especially within the first several minutes.
5. Stop
If at any time their voice level gets louder than your expectation, instead of shushing your students, stop the activity by signaling for their attention. Do this whenever they exceed the level you’ve asked for.
6. Remind
After getting your students attention, remind them what the voice level expectation is and put them on notice that if anyone goes beyond it, there will be a consequence—as promised by your classroom management plan.
7. Enforce
Listening and following directions should be one of your classroom rules. As such, if any single student is unable or unwilling to keep his or her voice level as modeled and practiced, then enforce a consequence.
Note: With group discussions, voice levels tend to increase as students attempt to talk over the other voices in the room. If it becomes loud enough to distract individual groups, simply stop them, ask them to take a few deep breaths, and then restart the activity. Do not, however, enforce a consequence.
8. Standardize
Consider standardizing the speaking levels in your classroom. For example:
Level 0: No Talking
Level 1: Whispering
Level 2: Small Group Discussion
Level 3: Whole Class Sharing
Create a small poster for reference and before every activity say simply, “For the assembly today, we’re at level zero.”
Effective At Any Grade
It may take a week or two for your students to get the hang of it. But when they do, controlling noise and voice levels in your classroom is easy and becomes something you never really have to think about.
Setting voice level expectations—for partner sharing, group work, browsing in the library, or just a walk across campus—through the super-effective one-two combination of detailed modeling and student practice works at any grade level.
And it’s so much more effective than having no clear picture of what you want, no expectation to model for your students, and no sound strategy to modulate the voices in your classroom…
Other than a great big ugly, “Shhhh!”
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Thank you so much for this article. It is really helpful. I loved the idea of the noise level! Thanks again!
Your welcome Maya and Michaelmary! Thanks for reading.
Michael
Thank you so much for this article. I like the idea.
I’m wondering if you have any ideas for an art classroom. We always struggle with noise level. I usually let the kids talk while they are working, but sometimes they just get louder and louder until it is distracting. I’m not sure how to get the class to consistently talk at a medium voice level. Any specific suggestions for an art class where the kids work independently but are allowed to talk?
Hi Marcia,
The guidelines above should work perfectly for your situation.
:)Michael
I teach English in a middle school in China. There are several students in my class who always mumble when answering a question or read something aloud in front of the class. They speak in a very low voice and unclearly that I can hardly hear if I don’t stand close to them. Some of them are shy, some are just used to speaking in that way in public. Every time when it’s their turn to read aloud, the whole class would get bored. How can I train those students to speak louder and more clearly so the whole class can share?
Hi Carol,
How to teach students with shy personalities is an often overlooked aspect of effective teaching, made more difficult if you’re teaching a new language. Getting your students to read louder isn’t a one-time simple solution. If you ask them to speak up, you may do more harm than good. There is a chapter in Dream Class devoted to this very topic. I recommend downloading the book through either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. If you’re unable to do that, email me, and I figure out how to get a copy to you.
Michael
Hi Michael,
I teach second grade and have only had two days of school so far. I have a noise level poster in my classroom with a clothespin that gets moved to indicate the level at which we are working. I have modeled voice levels and the kids have modeled them as individuals, then groups, and then they have all practiced them. When working on an assignment, I told students that they may whisper. The noise level got loud, so I signaled for attention and told them to please resume at a whisper. When the room continued to be noisy, I asked them to please conclude the activity silently (we were five minutes from lunch time). Do you have a better way of handling this for the whole group? I see that you said, ” After getting your students attention, remind them what the voice level expectation is and put them on notice that if anyone goes beyond it, there will be a consequence—as promised by your classroom management plan.” Did you have a particular suggestion for what that consequence should be when it is a whole-group problem? It’s hard to tell individuals in that scenario. Thanks!
Hi Jessica,
Read this article: How To Manage . . .
Michael
Thank you so much for this article. Our science teacher has made us write an essay on why a quiet classroom is a good classroom, but I do not agree at all. I am writing mine on why a quiet classroom is not a learning classroom. Thanks!
You’re welcome, Noelani.
Michael