Attention Grabbers

Choose one of the below attention grabbers to use in your class tomorrow as we welcome all the excited new students into our rooms!  I found this first fun idea on the blog, Adventures in Teaching, over the summer. Scroll down to view examples for middle and high school age students...




 Kathy Morlan, a high school teacher, has used this idea with her English class:

She uses her iPod touch's clock feature. (This feature is also available on the iPhone, and iPad).  I'm guessing all smart phones have some version of a timer.  Kathy says, "I set the timer for 1 minute, and set the sound for crickets chirping or a duck quacking. When I set the timer, the kids hear this weird sound, I tell the class to finish their thoughts, and a minute later here's this "quack, quack" and we wrap up." 

View this 1 min. video clip to see an easy example used in a middle school.  This would also work great at any grade level.