Blurt Chart

A year ago I was doing my internship in a 3rd grade class. I loved that class, but they sure did enjoy shouting out during lessons. This became a problem when some students would shout out an answer about two seconds after I asked a question, leaving no time for those students who really needed the practice to come up with an answer of their own.

I had seen various Blurt Charts on Pinterest and decided to make one of my own. In case you have not heard of a Blurt Chart, the idea is that if a student yells out in class, he/she has to take down the yellow smiley face. If he/she does it again, the orange face comes down. If it happens again, the red face comes down, and the student faces some kind of consequence. Essentially, it gives each student three chances to shout out without getting in trouble immediately. My students shouted out so frequently that they got three blurts a day, but you could also do three blurts in the first half of the day and three blurts in the second half of the day or three blurts a week, etc.--whatever works for your class.

I have a Silhouette Cameo, so this was made using my printer and my Silhouette Cameo. The chart and the smiley faces were laminated separately. Once the smiley faces were laminated and cut out, I attached velcro dots onto the back of each smiley face. I had many more smiley faces than I needed since I printed as many as I could on one sheet of cardstock, but I figured it would be helpful to have extra smiley faces on hand in case any got ruined or lost. I placed a small bucket next to the Blurt Chart so that students had a place to drop their smiley face when they were asked to take a "blurt" down. This was also a good place to hold the extra smiley faces.

The Blurt Chart really helped the students stop themselves before yelling out, and eventually we didn't really need it anymore (which is the ultimate goal, in my opinion). The students seemed to like the Blurt Chart system--especially the velcro part. The students who frequently shouted out, disliked having to take a "blurt" down, but they also liked pulling off the velcro smiley face. The students who NEVER shouted out occasionally asked me if they could take one of their smiley faces down just for fun or just to see what it felt like. :)