Quiet Coyote

One of the first week activities for this middle school art class that I'm covering until they hire a teacher was to create a "social contract" of rules the kiddos agreed to follow. (I mentioned this last week.) We started with them making a list, and then "together" we whittled it down to five rules. 

(So, it was more me going over the list they generated with them and then suggesting five rules that kind of hit upon what many of them said. I didn't have a lot of student participation.) 

While we did this, I decided I needed to add in one final bit. What signal would they prefer me to use when I needed to get their attention? 

This is an art class. My plan is to give them projects to work on, and then they can listen to music on headphones or talk while they're working. (Silence is great for some things. I don't think art is one of them.) 

I have a few of these in my toolbox, but I thought it might be nice to see what they preferred. I listed a few I know. 

The first class then suggested "waterfall". I knew of this one, but I hadn't used it before. Cool. Then all the classes that day decided they liked "waterfall" the best. 

The next day, "waterfall" wasn't as popular. But then eighth period suggested one I had never heard of before. "Quiet coyote". 

And that overwhelmingly won the vote. Okay then... 

We'll see how that goes.