Trick

I’ve found a fun way to get the class’s attention when they’re making noise. :)

They’re kids. Sometimes the noise volume in my class becomes too high to teach, which frustrates me quite a bit, but now that I’ve found a method of quieting them, life is good.

I simply raise my hand in the air. The few who are paying attention to me will follow suit. Then I do things with my fingers, making different hand signals... one finger, two, three, four, five, thumbs up, thumbs down, just my pinky, just my index finger, all five fingers, spread apart, fingers closed, into a fist, open, waving, etc. Just silly little things. The kids paying attention try to copy what I’m doing. Once the talkatives realize what’s going on, they become quiet to concentrate on following my hand motions. When I can see that the whole class is quietly paying attention to whatever I’m doing with my hand, I swoop my arm around and bring one finger in front of my lips... “Shh!”

The next thing I know, the twenty-one Ghanaian school children in front of me have one finger to their lips, and all is quiet.

“Thank you. Now, back to the lesson...”