I loved my fifth-grade teacher. He had a theater background, and so his teaching was punctuated with different voices, random singing, and general hilarity. I thought he was brilliant. He could grab the attention of his class like none other. (A balding, bearded man singing, “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story will do that.)
When I found myself in the classroom, I ended up borrowing a few of his ideas. I never sung “I Feel Pretty,” but I certainly made use of random songs, silly accents, and fun puppets. These techniques were great to add to my mental dictionary of attention grabbers. Plus it makes school just plain fun for the students. Check out this article about one teacher who uses fun voices to his advantage.
Tell me how you use your voice to bring teaching to life. Do you use accents, singing, or silly voices?
I use whispering often. But my favorite to use is my puppets. Each of my puppets has a wonderful personality. I have Moe Monkey who lives in his polka dot house (a big tote bag)
It has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom and the basement. Moe has to sleep in the basement most of the time because his friends come to visit. My favorite is Rodney the rat who loves to shop the dumpster in the alley behind Target and wears some of his crazy finds. I have found this to be a great way to teach kids about animals. And I am having fun
I love to use silly voices during word work. Spelling, high frequency word reading, building words and more. I’ll change it up and ask kids to spell or read in a certain voice. Kids love it and ask for it. Speak like “a grandma, man, kitty, dog, whisper, british, a mouse, and more”.
The students jump right in :). Hey….whatever it takes!
I use a whisper to help my students quiet down. I sing in a silly voice to get their attention and they are all ears and listening as well as laughing. I use a low voice and a very high voice this usually intrigues them. “Oh, you’re so silly Miss Karen!” It gets their attention 🙂