Art is From the Heart

Teach Kids Art...Cheryl
http://www.teachkidsart.net/mona-lisa-attention-signal/

Great Classroom Management Idea....

I’m excited to share the best class­room man­age­ment tech­nique I’ve tried in years.… the “Mona! Lisa!” atten­tion sig­nal. I used this new tech­nique in all my K-8 classes this week, and it was even more suc­cess­ful than I had hoped for!

Kudos go to Tri­cia Fuglestad of Dry­den Art Fugle­blog for shar­ing this fan­tas­tic idea, which she learned from Scott Rus­sell. It’s a sim­ple call and response.… you say, “Mona!” and your stu­dents respond with “Lisa!”, and show you their best Mona Lisa pose: eyes on the teacher, mouths quiet, and hands still. (Yes, “mouths quiet”.… it really works — woo hoo!!!)

I announced to each of my classes that the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo Da Vinci, would be our class mas­cot this year. I have a small Mona Lisa print mounted on card­board which I placed on the white board tray. After prac­tic­ing our best Mona Lisa poses, we ran through the “Mona! Lisa!” call and response.

Then we prac­ticed. Through­out our class time, when­ever stu­dents got a lit­tle too loud, or I needed to get their atten­tion to give more instruc­tions, I used the “Mona! Lisa!” atten­tion sig­nal. Some­times I had to repeat “Mona!” a few times until I had everyone’s atten­tion, but it got bet­ter the more we prac­ticed. In the past, I tried every­thing from flick­ing the lights, to count­ing down from five, to clap­ping rhythms, to using chimes. But none of those tech­niques even came close to “Mona! Lisa!” for quickly get­ting stu­dents’ atten­tion. It was so easy — remark­able, really, in how well it worked.

Check out the Dry­den Art Fugle­blog for a down­load­able “How to be Mona-ificient” poster as well as a great poster for “Art Room Voice Lev­els”. And be sure to fol­low this cre­ative blog if you use an iPad or other tech­nol­ogy in your Art Room.… tons of inno­v­a­tive ideas here!