I play a game called “Beat The Teacher” and it helps my students. The basic premise is: I count down from 5 and if all voices are off and attention is on me, the students receive a point. If they aren’t, the teacher receives a point. I can count fast or slow, loud or quiet, the students have to be ready & listening. I keep a tally all day and if the students win, they get a GoNoodle or other activity. If I win, the students owe me 3-5 minutes of recess. My students are really motivated by the game. Once they have it down, I will add in the challenge of keeping the total number of tallies below a certain number (depends on the class.)

I use a little bell to grab attention and then start talking quietly.  The less they talk, the louder my voice gets until it’s at a normal speaking voice.  I also walk around the classroom and stand right behind or next to the kids who are chatting.  It usually stops the talking right away.

I use ClassDojo and it works well for this year’s class.  Last year’s not so much, but my class this year responds well to it.  We also do A LOT of movement activities and that helps them get out excess energy. 😉

When my kindergarten kids come in to the classroom in the morning, they get 5 Blurt Beans.  We have two jars one that we work on filling to earn a reward and the other to collect any blurt beans for when we blurt or talk when we are suppose to be listening.  This has really worked, at the beginning a few would lose all their beans, when they realized I was serious about the blurting and overall general chattiness less beans have been lost.  Now our reward jar fills faster then the blurt bean jar.