Whew, it’s officially HOT in New Jersey!  My classroom is getting sticky and my students have a full blown case of summer fever… 19 days left until school’s out!

While I *can’t wait* for summer, I can’t help but think about next year.  I’ve been going over the things I tried that didn’t work {hey, it happens!}, as well as the ideas I used that worked really well.  I can tell you two things that worked really, REALLY well:
Hand signals & voice levels!  Do you use these in your classroom?

Before this year, my only “signals” were holding two fingers up for bathroom and a pencil in the air for a sharp pencil.  Then, every time I called on a student to answer a question, I’d hear, “Can I get a drink?” or “I need a tissue!”  It drove me insane!!!  So over the summer, I made myself a set of hand signals.  And can I say it’s made a WORLD of difference?!

Here are the signals I use now:

1 = pencil
2 = bathroom
3 = drink
4 = tissue
5 = question
a-ok = I’m done

I added that last one mid-year because I got tired of hearing “DONE!” 22 times after every assignment!  Now my littles flash me the a-ok signal and I give them a little nod and a smile.  It’s perfect!!

I also love the visual of a voice level chart:
*Most of the time* my group will be on the appropriate level!  If I forget to mention what voice level we should be on, you can bet that one of my babes will remind me!

I put these bright chevron management tools together into a little pack: hand signals & voice levels! {chevron theme}.  You can grab it on TpT if you’re interested!  This set is also included in my brand new classroom set-up starter kit! {chevron theme bundle} pack… which I will blog about this weekend!

I hope you LOVE them!!  I’d love to hear what you think! 🙂

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