Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Attention grabbers.

Have you seen things like this all over pinterest and blogs?? This one is from I Love 2 Teach.


I thought this was so cute and wanted to introduce it to my class.  Currently, I use a bell to call students attention while they are working but I wanted something fun that I could say to them to get their attention.  We had just changed desks so lots of commotion was happening.  I decided it would be a perfect time to introduce some of these.  Since I knew that my kids know what McDonalds is, I thought I would start with that one....

Let me tell you.

It BOMBED!!!
It was so funny.
I asked them if they had ever heard it before......
....silence.....
no! They hadn't
I had a few kids guess that the theme song was Old MacDonald!! I honestly laughed at them... (woops) but several others thought the same thing. OOpS!! 

Then I tried to do the "Goodness gracious great balls of fire one....
 a phrase that I quite enjoy.  
Nope, that did nothing for them either.  
They had never heard that and thought I was crazy.

I tried the na na na na Hey Hey hey, goodbye.  Never heard that one either!  Ugh.  

This new idea that I was really excited about completely and utterly bombed.

Now I know that if I really wanted to do this I could just make them learn it and we could use it.  But it isn't as fun to do these things when the kids have no idea what they mean.  

Yet another reminder that teaching in Thailand is WAAAAAAAAAAY different than teaching in America.  

I will say that I do something that does work wonders and the kids do enjoy it.  We started this the first day of school so they are used to it and it works.  (I just wanted to add other things). 

When I want to get their attention while they are doing whatever I say:
One (clap) Two (clap) Three (clap), FREEZE.  Whatever they are doing they have to stop and look at me.  Sometimes they are mid walk and have to stop.  Sometimes they are in silly positions and have to stop.  My only rule is that both feet have to be on the ground! (I have had a kid fall over because he was being extra silly.)  I like this a lot because they know what freeze is.  Plus, it allows them to be a little silly if they want while still giving me all of their attention.  



What type of attention grabbers do you use?  Do you ever introduce new ones throughout the year or do you only do it at the beginning of the year?  



3 comments:

  1. I am secretly smiling right now Brittany because I remember years ago when we were doing our apple unit and I said, "An apple a day keeps the _______ away?" Crickets. They all stared at me like huh? Guess I'm old-ouch!

    We have just discovered Whole Brain Teaching and are loving it! Our lil kid population has changed dramatically in the past 15 years and grabbing and holding their attention is becoming much more challenging.

    Part of WBT is saying, "Class" and they respond with "yes". However you say class, that's how they respond. So we throw in a little "Classity-class" "Yessity yes" or a lil southern drawl. A whisper, etc. They love it. There is a ton of stuff on line if you are interested.

    ~Christy & Tammy
    Fluttering Through First Grade

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  2. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not sure my kids in America would know those three attention grabbers either! I use WBT and class-yes, as posted above. It works wonders!

    Kate
    EduKate and Inspire

    ReplyDelete
  3. I just use the Whole Brain Teaching "Class, class" -they say "yes, yes". But.. a friend of mine uses "She loves you." they say "Yeah, yeah, yeah"

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