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No problem is trivial if it gives you grief. Welcome to the forums! This is tricky: you've got silence when you need it. Believe me when I say that many teachers would see that as reaching the top of Everest and doing a little jig. But you, understandably, want more; you want them to be able to talk quietly about the work. Tall order, because insisting on silence has one advantage over the 'talk quietly' approach- it's clear, and easy to spot when it's been ignored. Allowing a whisper of talk on top of that is always going to be hard to moderate, because instantly it becomes very hard to sift the wheat of enquiry from the chaff of chatter and gossip. Unless you have the hearing of a bat, it'll just come across as noise, until the noise gets too great for the class to work. Maintaining a low level is always going to be a hard job, because the natural tendency is for noise to creep up until it reaches a plateau where there is nothing but shouts and cheers and your sanity is shredded. Approach 1: Don't tell them that they're allowed to talk, but just let them and see what happens. You could warn them that you;ll be keeping any behind who talk too loudly, or overtly about off-task issues. Then you have to patrol it, constantly cutting the heads off the tall poppies. This will require vigilance, time and effort, and you may not have the patience for it. However, it could train them into tacitly understanding the new paradigm in the classroom. Like I say, it'll take time. Approach 2: Accept that getting silence is the battle nearly won, and simply drive conversation by being the instigator of it- ask directed questions, set short talking tasks with neighbours that are ruthlessly timed and stewarded, so that they learn to talk in a moderated manner; make sure that when you assess the task, their is some way you can ascertain that the talk has been directed towards the task set- see if the chattier ones have come up with the goods you've been looking for. Then if they haven't you can punish/ praise as you see fit, and the students will learn that when you set a talking task, you mean that it's a task and not just talk. It takes time to achieve either; but if you;re serious about driving the behaviour towards engagement and learning, then you will no doubt relish it. There is of course, a third alternative: Approach 3: Silence is great, much of the time. If the class is quiet, it's a hell of a lot better for them than if it's rowdy. If I had to choose between a class too quiet or a class too noisy, give me quiet any time. Not for me- for them; for their learning. You;re right to worry that silence can mean boredom, lack of engagement, etc. But believe me, it's a much lesser evil than chaos, which is where most teachers fall down in tough schools. Perhaps you should count your blessings? Whatever you choose, good luck Read more from Tom on his blog, or on his Twitter here.
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