Classroom Traffic Light
A free classroom traffic light display: red for silent work, amber for pair work, green for group work. Tap a light to change the mode, and the whole class can see how they are meant to be working without you saying a word.
- No signup
- Nothing to install
- Free forever
Silent
Working on your own, no talking
How teachers use a classroom traffic light
A traffic light on the board says how the class should be working, in a form a child can read from anywhere in the room and without interrupting anybody. Red is silent and independent. Amber is quiet work with a partner. Green is group work and moving around.
The value is in the switching. Changing the light is faster than explaining, and it lands with the whole room at once — which matters most at the exact moment a lesson changes gear and thirty children need to know the rules just changed.
- Red for independent writing, tests and quiet reading
- Amber for talk partners, paired reading and think-pair-share
- Green for group tasks, carousels and practical work
- Switching to red for the last five minutes of a task, to settle the room before you gather it in
- Setting it before the class comes in, so the expectation is already on the wall
A display, not a behaviour chart
This is deliberately not a red-amber-green chart with children’s names on it. Those are a different thing — a public record of who is in trouble — and the evidence for them is thin while the cost to the children who live permanently on red is not.
This traffic light describes the task, not the class and not any individual. Nobody moves down to red; the work does. That distinction is worth being clear about with a class the first time you use it, because plenty of children will have met the other sort.
On the board, in full screen
The lights are drawn large and the whole housing scales with the screen, so it reads from the back of a room on a projector or an interactive whiteboard. Full screen strips out everything else when you want the signal to be the only thing on display.
Each light is a button big enough to press with a finger on a board, so changing the mode mid-lesson takes one tap on the way past rather than a trip to the laptop.
Noise meter, voice level or traffic light?
These three get mistaken for each other because they all sit on the board and they are all about noise. They do different jobs, and most classrooms end up using two of them together.
| Tool | It | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Noise Meter | measures | Listens through the microphone and shows how loud the room actually is, right now. |
| Voice Level | sets | Displays the volume you are asking for, as a number from 0 to 4, so the class knows the expectation. |
| Traffic Light (this page) | signals | Shows how the class should be working — silently, in pairs, or in groups. |
Frequently asked questions
What do the three colours mean?
Red means silent, independent work. Amber means quiet work with a partner. Green means group work, where talking and moving around are expected. You can use them for whatever suits your class, but those are the meanings most schools use.
Is this a behaviour chart with children’s names on it?
No, and deliberately so. It describes how the class should be working, not who is behaving. No child is moved onto red — the task is what changes colour.
How is it different from the voice level chart?
The traffic light signals the working arrangement — alone, in pairs, or in groups. The voice level chart sets how loud, on a 0 to 4 scale. They combine perfectly well: a class can be on green for group work at voice level two.
Does it work on an interactive whiteboard?
Yes. It works in any modern browser, the lights are large enough to read across a room, and each one is a touch target big enough to press with a finger.
Is it free?
Yes — no account, no signup, no adverts.