The Liberty Bell

We traded prompts in class today and I got the Liberty Bell. This little bell is cute. It looks like its made of bronze. My daughter's second grade teacher had a bell she used in her classroom. I was able to volunteer some in her classroom and was very surprised by how well the bell worked for her. She was a wonderful teacher. She was a very soft spoken teacher. You would think that wouldn't be the best in a classroom of twenty-one seven year olds but it worked for her. She never once raised her voice in the class. Every time the students were getting a little loud and they couldn't hear her she would ring the bell twice. Every child in the classroom immediately stopped what they were doing, instantly got quiet, and turned to look at her. She would then tell them what she wanted to say. Use inside voices, time to change centers, line up for the end of the day. No matter what was going on all she had to do was ring that little bell of hers twice. I was dumbfounded the first time I witnessed it. I couldn't belive that was all it took to quiet the entire classroom. When I started working in the daycare, in the older classroom, I tried using the bell. It worked at first for me but then the kids just started saying they wanted a bell and wouldn't listen to me so I ended up not using the bell anymore. I found something else that worked for me.  Books. I read the children books. When they are getting to loud I just pull up my chair, grab a book, and start reading. It nevers takes more than a minute or two for the children to stop what they are doing to listen to the book. I read a book so often to my class that when it was time to move out of the classroom and train someone else the children were disappointed in her because she doesn't read to them as much. She told me that one day when the class was getting a little loud one of the girls looked at her and said this is when you get a book out. This just goes to prove that the same thing doesn't always work for the same person. For Mrs. Johnson the bell was a lifesaver, for me a bookis my lifesaver.