Classroom+Climate

Type
CLIMATE

Description
The first minute of class is spent in silence.

Purpose
To settle and calm during the transition to a new episode of learning. To have students experience a moment where they are formally expected to do...nothing.

Range
Grade 7+

Fruitility
The moment is regarded differently among my students, but it nonetheless punctuates their stream of activity and creates a transition zone between whatever they had just been doing and this nascent episode in their learning.

Features
This moment is both welcomed and put to use more by some than by others which (now) comes as no surprise to me considering that this is a group of emerging adolescents. Doing nothing is appreciated by many, just plain hard for some, and probably seems wacky to a few. I only insist on silence and that attention not be given to others (so, reading is okay; giggling with neighbors is not). I've seen Nate Nichols do this with his students at Casco Bay HS and I appreciate his philosophy: Young adults are being told what to do all the time in many places by many adults. Here's sixty seconds where that's not the case. (Breathe.)