One of the reasons that I fell in love with Whole Brain Teaching is because it wasn't one more thing I had to do. The strategies and techniques were so easy to implement and use that everything I was already doing became so much easier and so much more successful. I could give you numerous examples of this, but in this post I would like to share with you the difference that Whole Brain Teaching made in my favorite contraction lesson. When I was student teaching one of the cooperating teachers at the school I was at shared with me a lesson that she used to teach contractions to her students. I fell in love with it and have been using it ever since. It is called "Magic Door Contractions". Below is a picture of a Magic Door".
In the past I always taught this lesson by telling students that I was going to do a magic trick for them. I would then hold up the door with both flaps shut. Making a big production out of it, I would tell my students that I was going to take two plain ordinary words, did and not, and by saying the magic words, "AbraCadabra Contraction Action," I would turn these two plain ordinary words into a contraction. I would then open the doors with a flair and reveal the contraction did not. I then would explain that magicians all have a secret to their tricks that only the magician knows. I would ask my students if they wanted to become magicians and be able to do the magic door trick - which of course they all did. What followed was my ten minute lecture on how to form a contraction. Of course, I was very dramatic as I explained how I would say the contraction that the two words made; listen for the missing letters; and then squeeze the two words together, replacing the missing letters with an apostrophe. What I did not realize was that I was talking far too long, and that no matter how dramatic I was being, most of my students had tuned me out after a couple of minutes. I would always end the lesson by giving the students blank doors that they had to fill in with the two words and contraction of their choice. They would try the trick one time with a partner, and then they would take their doors home to do the trick with their families. I had always felt like this was a good way to introduce students to what contractions are. It was fun and hands-on. Students got a good introduction to contractions, which I built upon over a two week period in which I gave students many days of practicing how to make contractions.
This year I still wanted to use my Magic Doors, but I wanted to present them to my students using the Whole Brain Teaching vehicle of choice: The Five Step Lesson Plan. In this post I will not be defining common WBT terms used during a five step lesson such as "Mirror" and "Teach Okay". If you are not familiar with the specifics of a five step lesson, please see my separate posts on this topic which will define these terms and take you more in-depth. For the purposes of this post, I simply want to demonstrate how I was able to take a lesson that I have already done, and teach it the WBT way. Below is what it looked like the WBT way:
* Please note that this lesson took place over a three day period.
Question: (MW) What is a contraction? (T/O)
Answer: (MW) A contraction is a word with missing letters marked by an apostrophe, zeep. (Zeep is the sound effect that accompanies the apostrophe, which is one of the Brainies.) (T/O)
Explain: I did my magic trick, and then I asked the students to explain the trick to their partners (T/O)
I then reminded my students that the apostrophe took the place of the missing letters. So I asked them which letters were missing in the contraction didn't. They had to tell there partners which letters were missing and how they knew, using a because clapper. (T/0 followed by Call-Outs)
(MW) Contractions come in families. (T/0) I then displayed a poster of contraction families and asked my students to determine how many contraction families there are. (T/O followed by holding up fingers to show the answer) Below is a picture of the poster I displayed:
I then went under my sign for Big Point. Students who chose to become model mirrors stood. (MW) Every family has the same missing letters. (T/O) I then made a big deal out of the fact that if you can learn which letters are missing in each family, then you can make any contraction. I also reminded them that they already knew the missing letter in the "not" family, so that meant they only had eight more to learn.
We then looked at one family at a time and using T/O followed by call-outs, students had to tell me the missing letters in each family. They also had to prove which letters were missing using a because clapper. Before we moved on to a new family, I would give students a list of the words that made up the contractions in that family and they had to tell their partner the contraction for those two words in a complete sentence and write the contraction on their air whiteboard. (One of the Brain Toys). We used High Five Switch for this. Below are the sentence frames that the students used when sharing:
___________ is the contraction for __________ and ______________. You write the contraction _____________ (Spell it on your air whiteboards.)
After all of this, I told them that it was now their turn to do the magic trick. We went through the same process we did at the beginning of the lesson with me doing a trick and the students explaining the trick to their partners using T/O. I then passed out doors already made. (This was a switch from what I had done in the past when the students made the doors, but I felt that this way they would have the opportunity to do more tricks.) Using Uh/Oh Switch students did the trick for their partner. Students then traded doors and did the trick with their new door, once again using Uh/Oh Switch. We continued doing this until students had had the opportunity to perform the trick several times. When done I allowed all of the students to take one door home so that they could perform this trick with their parents.
Test: I used QT and made statements such as: In the not family, the missing letter is the "o".
Critical Thinking: Students had to write a paragraph that answered the question, "What is a contraction?" They were encouraged to use the "For Example Popper". (This is another one of the Brain Toys.)
*I was also giving out Super Improver Stars all week to students who had begun to use contractions in their writing.
Following this lesson, students had an additional one day of practice making and writing contractions before they were tested.
How did the WBT way compare to what I used to do? In past years I spent two weeks on contractions and spent a lot of time working with students in small groups to make sure they understood what a contraction was and how to write one. It was a lot of work. When test day came I would get a few hundreds from my high students, and the rest of my class would mostly get B's. Generally I would get a few C's, as well as a couple of D's or F's, usually from my special education students. I would then go back and meet with the students in small groups or individually to discuss what they had trouble with on the test. It was an exhausting process.
This year I spent one week on contractions. I spent no time working with students in small groups prior to the test. Sixteen out of seventeen students got an "A", including my two lowest. One student got an "F". I only had one student to go over the test with, and the entire week of teaching contractions was fun and easy!
If you have not yet tried Whole Brain Teaching, my question to you is "What are you waiting for?" It is not more work. It is a methodology that is fun, easy, and a perfect fit for anything that you are already doing.
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