My discipline committee, which I am on, has met several times this year, every time the topic of lunchroom noise level, behavior, manners, etc... comes up. We just haven't found the right answer yet to manage those things with all of those students. Here is our current situation:

During much of our lunch blocks, there can be up to 250 studnets in the cafeteria. Each class sits at 3 assigned tables, 8 kids per table.

We have 2 paras on duty to supervise lunch duty.

Teachers are fortunate enough to be able to eat in a teacher dining room, separate from the children.

Problems we are having:

1. Way to loud. We have tried showing videos during lunch. Worked last year, but this year, not too effective.
We turn out lights when they are too loud, then they are on silent until lights come back on.
We have done a version of class/yes, which is "Highlands Grove/Heroes" for silence cues.

2. Terrible Table Manners, play with/mix foods, food and items on the floor, yelling from table to table.


We have tried having teachers leaving the their behavior clipboards on the tables, so paras can use them to communicat problems to teachers.
We hold up 1 finger at a time to dismiss our students from tables 1-stand 2-push in chair 3-clean table and below on floor 4-pick up tray 5-walk to dispose of tray/trash

Personally, I think the biggest problem is consitency amongst the staff. It really doesn't matter what we try to implement, there is always someone who does not do it or does not do it to the same extent.

So, WBT friends, any ideas?

We have a similar problem at our school, but not to the extreme you describe. One of the problems at our school is the inconsistency among staff members. One of the paras runs a tight ship and the kids are well behaved, but not so much for the others. I think one of the keys is to make the change in the kids for a reason other than fear of punishment because then they learn to obey when they see authority around, but otherwise it doesn't matter.

One idea is to have someone take pictures or video in the cafeteria and have the principal do an assembly showing some "example/non-example" type things. Keeping it light and fun, kind of like on America's Funniest Home Videos where they pause the video and you guess what is about to happen. Show a beginning and then stop it and have the students talk about what the right thing to do would be. You may not want to show the end, because it gives attention to the poor behavior. At the end of the assembly, the principal might want to review the rules, then explain a reward system (caught being good) kind of thing. I think when it is group misbehavior you can catch most of the fence riders with positive reinforcement, then the ones who really need the consequences will be apparent.

Maybe someone with more WBT experience will have another idea. I have found the best luck keeping things in the fun and humor zone, rather than the lecture and consequence zone. Not that there isn't a time and place for the later, of course.

Nikki this is a hard topic...my first thought is that it's lunch time and they need to blow off some steam. But, on the other hand it needs to be calm. 70% of our kids eat outside on the playground so we don't have this problem...unless it rains, and then we are in the same boat that you are. Our aids don't do anything except try and keep the peace. As teachers several of us go and get them early and take them back to the rooms where we can do other things with them.

Still, there needs to be a solution. How about one massive lunch room scoreboard game? Maybe there could be the reward of two extra minutes of recess, leave the room early without cleaning up after themselves. If they knew they didn't have to clean up maybe they would work harder to get that reward. Now your paras don't want to clean up every day, but the kids aren't going to win but maybe once every 4-5 days. This is all hypothetical of course and you are still going to have to get this by your whole site, and get buy in with consistency from all.

See what happens and let us know.

Just one question on this? Does your school site have any sort of school wide behavior rewards in place? For example, my school has model tickets that we give for model behavior. Perhaps if your paras had some sort of reward for cleaning up quickly that they could give out that would help.
If not, what about a class competition? May be you could have each class competing to see who could clean up and sit silently the fastest when it is time to go. You can keep a score board in the cafeteria. Each day classes could win points and whenever they get to a certain number they get a reward like extra recess minutes. Obviously you need staff buy in for this, but I think it would be easy to manage. It would be good to have a developing goal instead of just winners and losers because those loud crazy groups would give up. If your staff would agree to give just a few points a day so that they are not all winning at once it may work. Same principle remains as with WBT scoreboard: the score is never anything other than what you want it to be!