While I don't know what will work for you in your classroom, there are a few apps that I absolutely love and use in my classroom almost religiously.
The first one is TOO NOISY.
This one is a sound meter. You are able to set it to your desired volume. They have presets for silent, quiet, group, or class. All of those have a sensitivity setting and I've found most of them to be pretty accurate for what I call reasonably silent, quiet, group, and class volumes. If you disagree you are able to adjust the sensitivity on a sliding bar as well as adjust the dampening. I'd like to tell you I understand what I'm doing when I'm adjusting those dials but it's just a big ol game of "give it a try!"
You can pay a little extra for it to have an alarm to signal when the noise level has gotten too loud. Personally, this is my favorite feature. When it gets too loud mine makes a crazy nuclear attack warning sound and it makes it look like the glass cracked and the happy face goes sad. I love this feature because it's very intrusive. It gets everyone's attention but it also puts the responsibility (I don't want to call it blame but...) on the children. It's not me deciding that they're too loud. I'm not the bad guy barking at the kids here. Too Noisy said you were too noisy. You can't argue with the ipad! At this point my students know that after the alarm they all stop everything, go silent and have one quiet rest minute before they're able to try working quietly again. I do start the 1 minute timer on my phone but since it's always beside me for a number of instructional purposes it is of minimal distraction. The little chime goes off after a minute, I hit the "ok" button on my phone and life continues. It's a good "reset" for kids during literacy centers time. It also allows me to continue teaching my guided reading groups in the most uninterrupted way possible. It's amazing how a group of 5 year olds can understand that even if there's a crazy nuclear alarm going off in the background that they CAN still work and that they SHOULD still work in their guided reading group. It's all in how you set it up and how much patience you're willing to spend on teaching them this. It's not bad and when they get to that point it's so super awesome.
You can also pay just a little extra for it to give reward stars for increments of time of your choosing. I have my stars set for every 4 minutes or so. For every 4 minutes that they go without an alarm they get a star. After they have earned 10 stars the app plays a big fanfare and my kids get some extra choice time or recess for that day. It may just be 1 or 2 minutes extra choice time, an extra book, or an extra song to sing, but it has worked very well in my class. If you're going to spend money on an app, I suggest spending it on this one to get the alarm and stars upgrades!
Good luck!
If you want further details on anything or just want to talk directly, email me at mrs.mosier @ gmail.com!
*I am not being compensated in any way for these reviews. I write these because I want to share my personal experiences with my colleagues. Bottom line, teachers need to support and be supported by fellow teachers because it's what's best for kids.
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