MENC Forums

I agree with the practice, practice practice.  It helps if you have some sort of silent sign to show that you are waiting for them to stop talking and watch you.
* I've done a thumbs up and I wait until every student shows me a silent thumbs up before I move on. 
* Rhythm echo clapping is a well known tool.
* My school also uses this: teacher "class"  students "yes", teacher "class class", students " yes yes"...I add to it by singing the "class" to my students and they have to sing "yes" back to me.

Find something that works for you and practice!  Good luck this year!

In my building, all first grade classes require their students to walk in the halls with "bubble gum faces" (close mouth and puff cheeks) and "give yourself a hug" (arms folded).  It's a lot to say each time they line up, but it works very well - and it looks so cute :)
With all my students in the five classes I discuss WHY it is important to not talk when someone else is talking.  Even with the K-2s I talk about respect and how that means letting one person at a time talk; everyone has something important to say and how they would feel if someone was talking while they were speaking.  When a child speaks while someone else is talking, I excuse myself and ask the child to be respectful to the speaking child. 

Some talking you just have to ignore -- Pick your battles!  If a couple kids on the side are whispering and they are not distracting anyone, ignore it.  On the other hadn, if they are loud and disruptive of course interject and say something. 

I have a "quiet sign" - hand in the air, on which I train them in the first few weeks of school.  If they are talking, I clap a four-beat rhythm pattern, which they are trained to echo.  Once most have clapped back I put up my hand and they get quiet.  Then I speak quietly and "get them back."

But overall this is a chatty age group.  They are social, they are learning to interact with their classmates.  Yet they need to learn that there is an appropriate and an inappropriate time for that.

My school had a 5-component listening policy:
Eyes watching
Ears listening
Mouth closed
Feet on the floor
Hands quiet or in lap

Each teacher had a poster in the classroom showing a child listening correctly, with the five components labeled. At the beginning of every school year, I re-taught correct listening in my classroom and we practiced. Then, I would often turn around and say, "I'm going to count to 3 and then turn back around. Let's see how fast you can show me how to listen!" Usually, students would rush to show the correct listening position. After a while, I could just say "Show me how to listen," and I would usually get the response I wanted. If not, I re-taught how to listen correctly.

In addition to teaching and re-teaching the behavior you want, you can also frontload it by saying things such as, "I'm going to need a special leader later in the lesson. I think I will choose someone who can listen correctly during the next activity."

Of course, there will often be a child who pushes the envelope, so you also need to be ready with some interventions/consequences that work for you. I used to use "seminars", in which a child who misbehaved came into my classroom on his own, valued time to be re-taught how to listen. This usually took 5 minutes or less. "Valued time" included when others were lining up for lunch, recess, and before or after school.

Last year I started doing the same  thing Maria does with the K-2's. (singing - "Eyes are on the teacher" ...etc). It works so well! i have a picture on the wall too, and I point to it every so often. I teach or review it at the beginning of the year, and the students echo me. Then, when they are a little too rowdy, I just start singing it. The kids that were paying attention start echoing me, and the ones that were talking get the picture and start echoing too... Then I can just jump into the next activity!

some ideas:

Build in time when they can talk -- turn to your neighbor and tell them everything you know about high notes, etc.  , or what they are going to be for halloween, etc.

Use musical signals for what you want -- I use a recorder to send out my musical message (saves the voice).

Don't teach while they are talking.  Wait.  And or....Say oh well, there goes the time for..what ever their favorite thing is.

I agree, remove the child but do not make it punitive.  Just a simple consequence.  Another fast action - change the kid's seat RIGHT AWAY.  Whoops there is talking, change your seat to here for the day -- pointing.  Keep the shifts fast and unemotional.

I know of one teacher who has the children PRACTICE the rules - they each pick ONE to practice during their lesson and they discuss how it went at the end.

For the little kids, I try to stick with 3 rules initially - one of them might be FOLLOW directions the first time they are given.

When we play singing games, i tell the children to pick someone with a QUIET hand only.

Our K-8 school used "DWP" Discipline with Purpose.  It's a wonderful program that teaches 15 life "skills."  The primary 5 are 1) LISTENING, 2) FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS, 3)SOCIAL SKILLS, 4) SHARING, 5) Asking Questions.

We taught the SKILL of Listening much like several of the above comments suggested: STOP what you're doing, LOOK at the speaker, CLEAR away distractions, HEAR, REPEAT, then DO.
Any time we had to stop the class for noise we would reinforce the steps of Listening.  Students who were demonstrating good listening skills could get stickers, compliments, etc.
When we get to the following instructions skill, the first step is Listening, so you back up and do it all over again.  I also had a 3 word sequence taped to the side of the piano at floor sitter's' eye level>  Listen, Sing, Do

This reminder often was encouragement enough because DO could mean movement, games, instruments, solos, etc.
Yes, this takes time, but it is worth every repetition.  Very seldom did I ever have discipline problems when the whole school taught self dicipline this way. 
Repeat offenders (forgetters) were placed apart with a paper that had the 5 skills with pictures.  They had to draw (or wrtie) what they were doing in the first box, and what proper discipline looked (sounded) like in the second box.  It was given to the homeroom teacher, sent home for a parent signature and returned to the homeroom teacher.  You do have to involve the homeroom teacher in some way since we only see them once or twice a week.