Talking with your Hands

Over the past week I have conducted an experiment with my Grade 11 College math class.  Monday, I introduced them to a new way that we would be organizing exits (washroom and drink breaks) from the classroom.  This was a suggestion that I picked up from a PD Session offered by UGDSB Administration for all NTIP teachers.  Rick Smith spoke to all in attendance sharing easy to implement classroom management strategies.

Rick suggested that she would try hand signals to indicate washroom or drink in the class.  This will stop those questions from popping into class discussions, especially at those key learning opportunities.  This week my students and I implemented four signals in total, they are shown below: 

Washroom: 


Drink: 

Yes:

No: 


So now when a student needs to leave the classroom for one of these common reasons, all they do is put up their hands with the appropriate signal.  I, from somewhere in the classroom, will respond to their signal with either a yes or a no. 

I will be honest, I did not think that this could possibly work for Grade 11 students.  Primary - Definitley, Junior/Intermediate - Maybe, Senior - No Way!  These students would not like the idea of using the signals (even if they follow ASL) even if I did come up with a creative way to present it. 

Was I wrong! 

I presented this to my class as a challenge.  It was our job to see if this would work well in a classroom at our school.  Would it be feasible to do this in all of our classrooms?  Does this help us minimize interruptions throughout the day?  I posed all of these questions  to my class and said that we would revisit this idea in a couple of weeks.  

The next day, the students were all over it!  They even helped to correct me when I was mistaken their hand-signal for a regular hand or did not respond with the correct versions of yes or no.

Throughout this week, I have seen a class take on a challenge and be successful with it.  Not only has this eliminated those annoying questions to leave the class at inconvenient time but this has improved our classroom environment.  

Before, I found that I was giving reasons for saying no to requests for leaving the classroom such as "wait until the end of the lesson" or  "there is another student out already, wait until everyone is back in the classroom."  With this new strategy, the students do not have the opportunity to argue about the answer they have been given.  The students, as there is no talking in the interaction, cannot ask for further clarification or argue the answer.  This has provided a more calm atmosphere in the classroom.  Even with my students with exceptionalities who usually argue, love this system and do not miss the arguing.  They take the answer at face value, if it is a yes they leave the classroom but if it is a no they continue on with their work.

What strategies have you implemented to remove the "arguing" from your classroom?