Mr. Pooley came into Miss Partridge's class and told the children that the disco had been cancelled as part of an activity, fooling the children, even though it wasn't actually cancelled. Miss Partridge then gave the class four different activities with different types of background noise or silence to see what helped the children focus best. They found that most of the class was able to focus well when working in complete silence or with only very quiet whispering.

1. In Miss Partridge’s
class

2. In class this afternoon, I gave the
children 4 different Brain
Busting puzzles.
For activity 1, I played some Pop
music on my iPod dock really
loud (I chose a song the children
would know the words to so
that they would be singing
loudly).

4. For the second activity, the
children were working quietly.
Mr Pooley came in and told me
that the disco had been cancelled.
Some of the children heard this
and were soon talking about it
and the news spread like
wildfire!
Of course the disco wasn’t really
cancelled, but Mr Pooley’s
fantastic acting skills had the
children fooled!

6. For the next activity, I played
some classical music.
I could see that for some
children this helped them to
focus and they enjoyed
having the music quietly in
the background.

9. For the final activity, I
asked the class to work
in complete silence. It
was so quiet, I could
hear them thinking!

13. 1
10

15. Pop Music
2 / 10
Not very easy
to focus on
work

16. Talking
4 / 10
Still not very
easy to focus on
work

17. Classical Music
6 / 10
More than half
the class were
able to focus
well.

18. SILENCE!
7 / 10
Most of the
class were able
to focus well.

19. So, our results have
shown that our class
focus best when we work
in silence, or with very
quiet whispering!