The "Quiet" Bag

Do you have chatty students? Who doesn't? That's what I would like to know...haha! We all know that there are just times during the day when the classroom needs to be quiet. The "quiet" bag is a visual reminder for your students to stay on task without talking. Take a simple gift bag that doesn't have "Happy Birthday" or other holiday on it. Make it a little festive with some tissue paper. Inside the bag place some little trinkets like stickers, erasers, etc. Make sure to put enough for each student that sits at each of your tables or groups of desks. (Our students sit at tables of 8 so, we put 8 of whatever the prize is in the bag.) Somewhere in your classroom, have a chart that displays a spot for each table and a place to place tally marks for each table. During the day, move the "quiet" bag around from table to table. If the students at a table are working quietly and staying on task, then put the bag in the middle of the table. When another table is doing the same, move the bag to that table and so on. Place a tally mark on the chart for the table each time the bag is placed on it. At the end of the day, the students that sit at the table that has the most tally marks get to keep whatever was in the "quiet" bag. The students get very excited over the smallest prizes. There are always some students that keep the bag from visiting their table as many times as other tables. :-( I tell the students at those tables to encourage the ones that are talking and keeping them from earning many tally marks and to also lead by example like putting their fingers to their lips to show those being noisy to quiet down. This idea worked for us for several weeks at the beginning of the school year. We are thinking about bringing it back after spring break.

HOW DO YOU REINFORCE GOOD BEHAVIOR IN YOUR CLASSROOM?