Day of Silence Follow-up

Day of Silence--How it went

This year, the day of silence happened to coincide with a field trip--which made for a rather interesting experience.

I warned the kids the day before that I wasn't going to be talking on Friday, but beyond that I didn't prep them much. I made some cue cards (kind of like the PECs cards I use with *Bob, with a combination of words and icons, to cover some of my more common and necessary utterances (Yes, No, Can't Talk, Okay, etc). Since Bob is non-verbal, I thought it would be a fun solidarity experience.

The student's reactions were interesting, but one totally unanticipated consequence is that the most talkative student in the classroom decided to join me, and spent the whole day more or less "speaking" in gestures only. I think he thought it was some kind of really fun game, so he totally got into it. Nobody else took it that far, but it did encourage less talking overall, which is always nice.

For the most part, I was able to not talk for most of the day. I had to do a "time out" a couple of times, but really it wasn't too hard. Body language and gesturing took care of a lot of my communication needs, and the cue cards were helpful. Ultimately it was kind of fun for me to take a day off from talking, and I'm inclined to try it again next year.