Classroom Management- Mystery Words

My summer school class is working me out more than my entire first year of teaching! {Hence the classroom management linky party I had earlier this week…thanks for all of the great ideas!}

I’ve been having a tough time getting my students’ attention because they can’t stop talking! Most of them are great listeners, but there are a handful of kids that just don’t care and are ruining it for everyone else 🙁 So I decided to implement a management strategy to teach them to give me their attention quickly.

First off, I brought in the good old marble jar! Kids will do anything for marbles 😉 I told them that when I need their attention, I am going to say “five” and hold up five fingers. I will give them five seconds to give me 100% attention. That means NO talking and eyes on me! After I say 5, I don’t count down. They need to be on their toes and help each other out if someone is still talking.

If they can give me their attention in zero seconds and I’m still holding up 5 fingers, they earn 5 marbles! If I have 4 fingers up, they earn 4. And so on. BUT, if I get all of the way down to zero, I take a marble out! Dun, dun, dun!

Then I showed them the mystery words I put on the board.

I got this great idea from Mrs. Lamb

Every time they earn 5 marbles, I turn a letter over. As you can see, they did pretty well! They’ve already earned 3 letters! And they are getting so much better at giving me their attention quickly!

You can download your own mystery word cards at my in my shop! I’ve included 14 different mystery prizes in both color and black and white!

Who can guess what the mystery words are?!