5 Whole Brain Teaching Tips and Tricks + Gold

One of my followers,  Amanda at Ms. Wilkie's Second Grade Class, asked if I had any tips for teaching Whole Brain style.  Here is what I came up with!

1.  When teaching each Power Pix, especially if the speaking bit is long, break each section into parts.  Add gestures to each speaking part.   Use a silly voice, add a goofy face/gesture, or sing a song.

2. I just, just started doing Silent Cheers.  I have a few students who always cross the line or go overboard with cheers, or just wait a little too long so they are not with the rest of the class when responding, use an overly loud/exuberant voice, etc. to give a cheer or choral speak with the class.  Finally, I came up with, "Give Hannah a double chin wiggle, with a 2 winks and cheek rub!" or "Give Petey a double eye-brow rub with a knee shake and a tummy pat!"  Works like a charm and is easier on the ears!!  Here is a WBT lesson on Singular and Plural Nouns - check out the Silent cheer at 2:54.

3.  My Power Pix wall is on a magnetic chalk board.  Instead of taking down previously taught Power Pix when all the room is taken up, I just start piling them on top of one another and voila - a 3D Power Pix wall - OH YEAH!  I had a little girl leading the Power Pix one day and she just flipped up one of the Pix to uncover the one she was looking for.

4. Try different things and experiment.  I have been playing around with The Wheel of Excitement lately.  I thought I would try this other method to encourage engagement in my class.  When students are especially engaged they or I will spin the Wheel of Excitement.  Where the arrow is closest to landing will determine how many Smilies the class receives.  If the arrow lands closes or on the star the teacher gets to choose the number of Smilies awarded.  If the arrow lands on the question mark, then I will roll dice to determine the number of Smilies awarded.  So far this has worked quite well!!

5. At the end of the day I always have a WBT ticket to leave.  Students must provide example poppers related to Power Pix learned that day.  For example, students may have to add 10 to a number of my choice after we have learned the 10 more than rule that day.  

Gold = I think the biggest tip I could give is be  yourself and have fun with Whole Brain Teaching!  The more you are having fun and allow yourself to be goofy or tap into your personality the better WBT with work for you and your class.

New Year's Class/Yes! and Scoreboard

Happy New Year!  My Grade 1's are back into WBT and we are having loads of good times!!  Some quick fun things:

Currently, I am saying Snowball Class and they say Snowball YES!  all the while making a snowball and throwing it at me - I duck and cover!!

Also, I say Snowball Fight Class and they say Snowball Fight YES and they throw a snowball at each other.

Smilies are POW! and Frownies are UGHH! - pretend like a snowball hit you in the stomach.

Update

Tried out the Genius Ladder orally these last couple of days.  Here is the example my kids came up with.  They were tickled pink by it!!

Blah Sentence:  Here is a school.

Spicy Sentence:  Here is a castle school made of pizza.

Extender Complexor:  Here is a castle school made of pizza where students get hot lunch and a pepsi every day!!

Super Improver Wall is ticking along!  Kids love it and almost every kid is on to the next level!  Oh yeah!

The Scoreboard fun continues.  Right now I am using Booyah for Smilies and No Treats for You for Frownies.  For Class/Yes!  I am saying Boo! Class, Meow Class, and Trick or Treat Class.

Practice Cards are in effect and working well!

Next week I am going to start using the student leader buttons!  I'm excited!!!  Happy Whole Brain Teaching!!!!!

My First Couple of Weeks

Well my friends, I am back at it again!  Here are my observations:


1.  Whole Brain Teaching is still so amazing!


2. I just got 6 new children - they unsplit the 1/2 split next door - now I have 25 kids and they picked up WBT so quickly.  Not sure if they know what hit them:)


3. Scoreboard has had about 30-40 smilies and frownies on both sides before recess.  The class has won the Scoreboard several times and they have lost several times, as well.


4.  I have still had private talks with students on occasion just to reinforce that when they break the rules they are causing frownies for the class, especially if they are being unsafe.


5.  I have had to remind myself occasionally to not use names when pointing out frownie behaviour.


6.  I am going to have to talk with my teacher aids and explain to them that this is a different type of classroom.  I may even give them some light WBT reading to do.  They are not in the mind-frame of practice, practice, practice like I am.  They look at me when students aren't sent back to their desks from the carpet for misbehaving.


7. I have had students sit out of an earned learning game - partly due to second guessing myself, aid comments, and the desire to have that student understand that what they were doing was not acceptable.  Really, each student is part of the class and if the class won the Scoreboard then the entire class should be allowed to partake in the reward.  Still, I think students need to get the idea early that what they are doing is not acceptable.  Do I give a student who is causing all the frownies a consequence even if the class wins the Scoreboard?  My initial thought says no because right now that child is still practicing.  My instinct says that child knows he/she is breaking the rules and, therefore needs a consequence.  What I really need to focus on is the class giving the consequence - peer pressure is the key - when I call out Rule 2 - the whole class needs to say it and really mean it!


8.  Line check has worked wonders on my line up!!  Thanks to Educ8rKP who wrote about this on the forum!! Very helpful!

"1. Laser-straight: the tiles on the floor help a lot, but we also have lines painted on our sidewalks. They know, because I remind them often, to make sure their left foot is on the line.
2. Dead quiet: I never allow any talking in my line. Not even to me.
3. Arms crossed: I used to allow kids to choose whether they crossed their arms or put their hands in their pockets, but I found that if you give an inch, they take a light-year. So, arms crossed only.
4. Faces forward: It's really irritating to me when people standing in line at theme parks aren't paying attention when the line moves forward, leaving a huge gap. I don't want my line to have gaps in it either.
I teach these four expectations, and slowly wean them off me reminding them of each one when we line up, and settle for the aforementioned "LINE CHECK!" They repeat "LINE CHECK!" and instantly snap to attention in a perfect, orderly, OCD-tickling line (tears of joy!). The key is consistency and unbending, unwavering expectation of perfection. As long as it's not perfect, we don't move. If we're already moving and it stops being perfect (arms swing out, someone talks, someone veers way out of line), I call "FREEZE!" and everyone stops. I say "LINE CHECK!", they respond appropriately, then we're on our way."

My goals right now are to:


1. Change my challenging students, to fence sitters, fence-sitters to go-alongs and my go-alongs to alphas.


2. To talk less and use Teach/Okay! more.


3. To be consistent.

This week...

This week, after reading Deb Weigel's blog, I was inspired and challenged my class to move from Class to Team to Winners to Champions just as Chris Biffle suggested during the live broadcast last Saturday.   I wrote all four words on the chalk board and I put a magnet beside Class.  When everyone was very focused and gave me their full attention immediately I moved the magnet down to Team, etc.  It worked really well to help and focus my class.  For the first time I felt like I had everyone's complete attention - before there was always a few stragglers who were off in their own world!!  It was so nice to see them really engaged quickly!  We never did make it to Champions but we did make it to Winners a few times.  I want to make it last as long as possible:)  Thank you Chris Biffle for the GREAT idea!!!

Also, we have been focusing on speaking and writing in complete sentences for the past two weeks.  The results are starting to make an appearance.  I had three students write amazing stories this week during Work on Writing time.  The sentences were not run-ons and for the most part started with upper case letters and ended with punctuation!!!  OH YEAH!

Today my class hosted Muffins with Mom as a thank you tea party.  It was so wonderful having parents in and being able to get the kids attention so easily.  I had the kids teach their parents about adjectives and they had to use an example popper sentence to describe their moms!  It was so cute!

One last thing - one of my students who has really shined in the last few months wanted to be in charge of the scoreboard.  I let him and he did an awesome job for me during each lesson!

P.S.  For smilies we are saying "Sweet!" and for frownies we are saying "Oh rats!!"