The Diamond Rule and Solo Yes

You gotta love Coach B.  As the founder of Whole Brain Teaching, he is always hard at work thinking up more ways to keep us in teacher heaven.  This week, on his Monday night webcast, he did it again.  He introduced us to two new ideas, which I implemented the very next day.  They are both awesome!

The first is a new rule.  You heard me right.  Whole Brain Teaching now has six rules, instead of five.  The new rule is called the Diamond Rule.  Coach B. created it to help solve a problem that all of us as as teachers face:  How do we get our students to look at the person who is teaching, whether it be us or another student?  As Coach B. explained, this is so important because when students are looking at the person speaking, their visual cortex is engaged.  By looking somewhere else, they are disengaging an entire portion of their brains.  This is not acceptable.  After all, this is Whole Brain Teaching, and we want the students' whole brains engaged at all times.

This is where the Diamond Rule comes in.  It very simply says this:  Look at the person who is teaching.  The gesture that accompanies it is to point your first two fingers towards your eyes, and then point those same two fingers towards others.  As Coach was sharing about this rule, someone on line came up with a great saying:  "Diamond Eyes".  I could not wait to introduce both the rule and the catchy saying to my students.

Since this was a new rule, literally hot off the presses, there were no signs for it.  So as soon as the webcast was over, I got to work creating mine.  I have attached it below.  If you like it, please feel free to use it.  https://www.dropbox.com/s/tlp9og8s2qdwj51/diamond%20rule.pub?dl=0

I introduced the rule to my students using Mirror Words and Teach Okay.  In Mirror Words, students copied my words and my gestures.  Then, during Teach Okay, they taught their partners the words and gestures.  This was immediately followed by "Wrong Way Right Way" practice.  This is a staple of WBT.  Students are asked to practice the rule both the wrong way, and the right way.  By doing this, students know exactly what the rule should and should not look like.  It leaves no doubt as to what is expected of them.  My kids loved the rule, and I saw an immediate improvement.  Suddenly all of my students - even the easily distracted ones - had their eyes on the person speaking.  It was awesome!  One of the nice things about this being a rule is that if I have a student who is having trouble following it, I can invite the student in at recess for two minutes of rule practice.  So far it doesn't look like I will need to do this, but it is nice to have that option if needed.

This rule has really helped during oral writing, when the students are sharing with Mirror Words.  Now, when I call on a student to share, instead of just saying the students name, I will say, "Diamond Eyes on ________."  This reminds the students of the expectation and focuses their attention on the person who is speaking.  I love it!  It has also helped my students earned more tallies for fourth grade mirrors (See last week's post.)  After all, if students are looking at the person who is doing the mirrors, it is a lot easier to mirror them.

Finally, I would like to share with you another great new idea from Coach B.  It is called Solo Yes.  Solo Yes is just like Class Yes, but instead of doing a call out with the entire class, you call one student's name, and that student is expected to answer yes, fold his hands, and look at the teacher.  Nothing else is said, and the lesson continues without interruption.  This is a great strategy to address the behavior of that child who, during a lesson, is playing with his eraser, looking in his desk, tying his shoe etc.  It quickly reminds the student to focus on the lesson, without disrupting the lesson's flow.  It has been a great help.  I used it a lot the first day, but since then I have not needed to use it as frequently.

I spoke at the beginning of this blog about teacher heaven, and I have to tell you that these two strategies have definitely helped to get me there.  Like so many things in WBT, they are so simple and easy to implement, but the payoff is huge.  I would strongly recommend giving them a try.  If you do, please leave a comment on this page letting me know how they are working in your room.  I would love to hear from you!