Yakking Tracker

Every year I always say the same thing...I am going to work more on my classroom management plan.  However, once I jump into the curriculum and start focusing on that, I lose my ideas!  This year, things are going to be different!  I have been brainstorming and searching Pinterest to find ideas to utilize.  However, when unpacking my room, I happened to find some old lights and paint that I had purchased after attending a conference.  It was a while ago and unfortunately I cannot give the proper person credit for it, I forgot which conference it was!  Here is what I found, plus a few of my kiddo's paint brushes.

So I started to paint....well actually my four small children decided that they were the ones to paint!  It was quite a site and there ended up being a pretty big mess on my deck.  But, as Randy Pausch said in his last speech, "Let the kids paint on the walls!"

After I made some fixes and scrappped a great deal of paint off of the light portion, I ended up with this!

Now, I know that there are stop light devices made for teachers and apps and such that are used for maintaining the volume of the classroom.  However, I like to be able to control the volume on my own.  Certain activities require a different volume and level of "yakking".  I plan to always begin with the green light.  If the volume starts to get a little too loud, I will light up the yellow, or instruct a student to do so.  From there, there is one final caution before we go back to silent, individual work...which I hope I NEVER have to get too. 

The lights I purchased, along with the paint, at Menards.  They were inexpensive and have a nice tape adhesive on the back.  Once I am in my room I am going to put them in the upper right corner of my front white board.  I love how they ended up...even more so with the smudges and the paint on the lights!