Student Contributor: K. Wale
Quiet Critters can be used in your classroom to signal to students when they are working quietly and following expectations. Quiet Critters are a fun way to encourage students to work quietly and independently. They are a great way to recognize students for their hard work.
Quiet Critters would work best with elementary-aged students. These critters are very easy to make. The example shown is pom-pom balls with little felt feet and googly eyes. Anything small that would fit in a jar would work, get creative with it! On the jar should be the “rules” of the quiet critters. On this example specifically the jar says, “We are quiet critters. We only come around when you are working quietly. We get scared when we hear a sound! We like to sit on your desk and watch you from afar, but if you start to make some noise, we’ll run back to our soundproof jar!” To most effectively use your quiet critters, place one on the corner of a student’s desk that you notice is working quietly during any task throughout the day. Once the voice level gets too loud, the quiet critters run away back into their soundproof jar. This tool encourages students to work independently at their desks while reinforcing that during work time, the expectation is that the classroom remains a quiet workspace. I do not have any first-hand experience, but from my research, they are an effective way to encourage students to work quietly.
I chose to put this tool in the supportive phase. In the supportive phase, the teacher is modeling and encouraging behaviors that they want the students to emulate. This tool should be placed here because it is used during learning when the critter is placed on a student’s desk, which in turn, encourages students to continue to work quietly. This tool can also relate to the preventative phase in that you are giving the students quiet critters to prevent the classroom from becoming too loud in the first place. I do not think this would relate to the corrective phase because you are giving the student the critter when they are already following the expectations. These quiet critters are not to be given to a student when they are not following the expectations.
More Information –
Tool Source: I found this tool on Pinterest, but there are other sources with the same idea.
