The Perfect Fit Methodology

When someone asks me what Whole Brain Teaching is, one of the first things that I tell them is that Whole Brain Teaching is not a program, it is instead a methodology.  This is a very important distinction.  We have enough programs in education.  Programs demand a chunk of our precious teaching time, they tell us what to do, and they often tell us exactly how to do it by scripting out everything that we are to say.  In a nutshell, it is prescribed content.  A methodology, however, is not content.  It is the vehicle we use to deliver the content.  It is the collection of strategies and techniques we use to ensure that our students are learning the content.  A methodology is not something else that we have to do.  It is a better way of doing what we already have to do.  This, in a nutshell, is Whole Brain Teaching:  a better way of doing what we already have to do.

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.

Practice Cards

Over the course of this school year I have had many teachers come to me in frustration because they had some challenging students in their classrooms and the basic scoreboard was not working for those students.  This is when I would introduce them to Practice Cards.  Practice Cards are considered to be level two of the Scoreboard Game and are designed to help you reach those students that Coach B. has named our "Beloved Rascals".  They are the kids who need a little extra motivation to follow the classroom rules.  In this post I would like to share with you what the practice cards are and how to implement them in your own classroom.

You will need to do a little bit of advance preparation in order to get started with practice cards.  The first thing you will need is a pocket chart similar to the ones teachers use for red/green cards.  However, you will be using yours for the practice cards.  Assign each student a pocket.  You will then need to run off, and I would suggest laminate, your practice cards.  (I will explain exactly what these cards are in just a moment.)  The good news is that the cards are already made for you.  You can find them under free downloads on the Whole Brain Teaching website,  The address is www.wholebrainteaching.com.  Just remember that you need to register on the site in order to have access to the free downloads.  You will also need a letter to send home to parents letting them know which rule their children have broken.  Finally, you will need a letter explaining this management system to the parents.

Now let's look at how practice cards work.  A practice card is a small card with one of the five classroom rules on it.  The rules are as follows:

1.  Follow directions quickly.

2.  Raise your hand for permission to speak.

3.  Raise your hand for permission to leave your seat.

4.  Make smart choices.

5.  Keep your dear teacher happy.

If a child is having difficulty follow a particular rule, the teacher places the practice card for that particular rule in the child's pocket on the pocket chart.  The child then must come in at recess for rule practice.  This is not intended to be a punishment for the child and should not be presented as if it is.  Instead, it is an opportunity for the child to practice the rule that he is having difficulty with so that he will remember to follow it in the future.  To practice the rule the child simply repeats the rule with its corresponding gesture over and over for a specific length of time.  Here, however, is the great part about this.  You let the child decide how long he thinks that he needs to practice the rule in order to remember it and be able to follow it.  It could be as short as one minute or as long as four minutes.  It is not about how long the child practices the rule.  It is about communicating the importance of following the rules and letting the child know that you are there to help him/her be successful in this.

The child is also given a note to take home to his parents letting them know the rule that he needs practice following and asking them to have the child practice the rule at home.  The note must be signed and returned the next day.  The practice card can then be taken out of the child's pocket.  Sometimes you will have a situation in which letters are never returned.  When this happens, you can ask another staff member to do rule practice with the student and sign the letter.

Since the goal is not to punish but to help students follow the rules, practice cards can be covered with purple cards, which means that the student does not have to come in for rule practice.  Here is how the purple cards work.  Let's say that you have a student that began the day blurting out.  He was not following rule two, so you put a rule two practice card in his pocket.  After he got that card, you could see that the child was working really hard at following rule two and did not blurt out the rest of the morning.  You could then choose to cover his practice card with a purple card.  This shows the student that you recognize and appreciate the effort he is making at following rule two; therefore, he no longer needs to come in for rule practice and will not need to take a note home.

If you have a child who consistently is breaking a rule, even after coming in for rule practice and sending letters home, it is time to give that child a star card.  I just take a note card and write the rule that the child is having trouble following in the center of the card.  I then ask the child to make a tally mark every time that he is following the rule.  When the child has demonstrated that he can follow the rule, he earns a Super Improver Star. (See my post on the Super Improver Wall.)  It is not about the number of tallies that a child makes on his card.  It is about using positive reinforcement to help a child change a behavior.

Practice Cards should not be started on day one of school.  Students need time to learn and understand the rules first.  At the beginning of the year when I student is having trouble following a rule I keep him in for a talk about the rule he broke and what he can do that would help him follow that rule.  I usually ask if the student would like a short talk, long talk, or no talk.  If they choose no talk they must tell me the rule that they broke and what they will do in the future to make better choices.  In a short talk I share this information with them.  I have not yet had a student choose a long talk, but I always leave it as an option.

Some teachers try not to start practice cards until the end of October or even Thanksgiving.  However, if you have a very challenging class, you might find that you need to start them sooner.  I have been very blessed this year.  For the first time ever, I do not have any real challenging kids; therefore, I have not had to implement practice cards.  I do, however, have them ready for when the need arises.  What I love about using the Whole Brain Teaching management system is that you have all of the tools that you need to work with challenging students, but you only pull them out when you need them.  Every class is different, so each year the tools that you use will be different as well.

For those of you who feel like the practice cards would benefit your students, I am sharing with  you the letter that I had created to send home for when I do decide that practice cards are necessary.  Please feel free to use it with your students

.https://www.dropbox.com/s/3pkdnnkctortbvu/Parent%20Letter%5B1%5D.doc?dl=0

Please note that there are additional strategies beyond the practice cards that you can use with your most challenging "beloved rascals".  You can find these techniques on the Whole Brain Teaching web site on the drop down menu under levels.  I would also encourage you to watch Coach B.'s webcasr called "Reforming Challenging Kids".  It can be found in the video library.  Go to  Goodies on the drop down menu and click on WBT tv.

I hope that the information that I shared with you will help you in working with your "Beloved Rascals".

Getting Started in Whole Brain Teaching

I like Whole Brain Teaching and would like to use it in my classroom, but it is so overwhelming.  How do I get started?

I have heard these or very similar words many times over the last few months.  I do not think there is one right answer, because each of us have our own learning styles and learning curves.  What I would like to do in this blog post is share with you what I did, in hopes that it will help and inspire you.

I found Whole Brain Teaching by accident.  I was bored one night, sitting at the computer, and decided to google "second grade best teaching practices".  Up popped something called Whole Brain Teaching.  Out of curiosity I clicked on it.  The website itself intrigued me.  I wasn't sure where to go first, but then I noticed a tab on the dropdown menu labeled first steps.  This seemed like a good place to begin, so I clicked on it.  I then began to read each item under first steps.  I have to admit that I was very confused at first.  It was almost like reading a foreign language.  At the same time, however, I found it fascinating.  I had never heard of anything like it.  At that time there was slightly over a month left in the school year, and I decided to give it a try.  My thinking was that if it worked and I liked it, I would be ready to go at the beginning of the next school year.  If I didn't, no harm in trying.

So, that night I typed up the rules (At the time I didn't know about all of the free downloads) and took very careful notes.  The next day I came to school armed with both.  The first order of business was to rearrange my desks so that all of my students had a partner.  Then, I drew a T-chart on the board for my scoreboard, hung my rules on the board, and when my students came in explained to them that we were going to try something new.  Then, the best way that I knew how, I explained to my students the five rules, Class Yes, Hands Eyes, and the Scoreboard.  A little later in the day I taught my students Teach Okay and Mirrors.  To be honest, Mirrors confused me the most.  I was not clear on exactly how Mirrors worked.  So that night I went home and googled "Whole Brain Teaching Mirrors".  That was when I discovered the Whole Brain Teaching You Tube channel and all of the wonderful examples of Mirrors and Teach Okay.  Armed with that new information I went back to school the next day ready to show my kids how it was done.

I have to stop for a moment and say that one of the main reasons that I was immediately so hooked on Whole Brain Teaching was the response of my students.  They loved everything that we were doing.  One of the first things that I noticed was that student engagement immediately went up.  I always ran a tight ship in my classroom, but I was amazed at how effortless it now was to get and hold their attention.  It was obvious how much fun they were having, and I was right there with them.

Anyway, this pattern continued for about a week.  Each night I would go home and watch videos.  I also discovered that there were lots of blogs out there, and I devoured them.  The one that I learned the most from was Nancy Stoltenberg's.  I never imagined that a few short months later I would be in the intern program and she would be my mentor.  God works in mysterious ways.  Every morning I would come back to school and share with the kids what I had learned that we were going to try.  I remember watching a first grade video in which the teacher called her partners Peanut Butter and Jelly.  Up until then I had just been using "A" and "B".  I loved her idea, however, and the next day my partners became Peanut Butters and Jellies.  If I forgot and called them "A's" and "B's", the students were quick to remind me.

While I was watching videos, I also discovered that you could register on the Whole Brain Teaching site and receive free downloads.  The only requirement was to tell ten people about Whole Brain Teaching.  I had already done that, so, as the site asked me to do, I sent a quick e-mail to Chris Biffle (The founder of WBT) letting him know that I had shared with ten others and thanking him for all of his hard work in making the resources available.  I then entered the world of teacher heaven.  I could not believe all that was available.  I had no idea what each download was, so I just began downloading titles that sounded interesting to me.  I would learn about something new and bring it back to school with me the next day.  It almost became like a game with my students:  "What is Miss Ray going to show us today?"  I was spending hours on this every night, but it was so much fun that it did not seem like work.

By this time I was totally hooked on Whole Brain Teaching and new that I would never teach another way.  It is hard to pinpoint one reason that I felt this way, but two things do stand out to me:  First, rule two stopped all blurting in my classroom.  I had a couple of students who blurted out all of the time.  This had been going on all year, and it was very frustrating.  However, by just saying "Rule Two" and having the kids say the rule, the blurting stopped within a couple of days.  It was like watching magic happen before my very eyes.  Then there was the change in my students' writing.  The writing downloads were some of the first that I looked out, because I was the most curious about them.  I fell in love with the Brainies, oral writing, Red/Green Writing, The Triple Whammy Sentence, and the Genius Ladder.  Those were all things that I had implemented by the second week, and the results were astounding.  In a way it is embarrassing to admit, because I always thought of myself as a very strong writing teacher, but I have to tell you that I saw more growth in one month in my students' writing than I had seen the entire school year.  It was incredible!

Other downloads that I loved and also immediately implemented were Electronic Super Speed Grammar, Super Speed 1,000, and Super Speed math.  I also learned from the downloads how to teach using the Five Step Lesson Plan and began building my lessons around that plan.  If I wanted to know more about a topic, I would scroll through the Webcasts until I found what I wanted, and I would listen to it and take notes.  Within a couple of weeks I had filled a new legal notepad with all of my notes. 

 At this point there was no real order to what I was trying out.  My goal was to implement as much of Whole Brain Teaching as I could before school ended, so that I would be ready for full implementation the next year.  I have to be honest.  It was a little crazy.  I was just so in love with WBT, that I was like a woman possessed.  In all my years of teaching I had never experienced anything like it, and I just couldn't get enough of it.  One evening I came across an explanation of Prove It on one of the blogs that I was reading, and I decided that I had to try it immediately.  My lesson plans the next day called for testing practice, because we were about a week away from end of the year testing, and I really wanted to try it the WBT way.  The next morning I was up at 5:00 watching Coach B's webcast on Prove It.  I took notes and that same morning I was teaching my kids how to play. 

I was so determined to try everything out before school ended, that I had my kids doing paper clip editing on the last day of school  I didn't intend for this to happen, but I had just read about it a couple of days prior, and I really wanted to try it out.  My kids didn't mind.  They thought it was a lot of fun.  That is what makes WBT so engaging for our students.  It is that golden thread of "funtricity" that is woven into all that we do.

By the last day of school I had pretty much tried out everything except for three star homework, Mind Soccer,  and the Super Improvers Wall.  By the time I had learned about these things, their were only a couple of weeks left in the year, so it was to late to implement them.  There were also a few other things that I didn't get to, like Puzzlers and Complexors (components of the writing game) and Brain Toys.  I was on overload and finally decided that some things would have to wait until the next year.

That summer I got a copy of Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids and began reading.  I also made it a point to watch all of the webcasts that I had not already seen and read anything on line that I had not already read.  By the end of the summer I had filled another notepad with information.  I do not think I had ever been so excited for a school year to begin.  I couldn't wait to see what it would be like to start Whole Brain Teaching with a class from day one of school.  Let me just say that I have not been disappointed this year.  WBT has far surpassed my expectations.

I have since been told that the way I implemented WBT in my classroom is not the norm.  Most people probably take it a little slower than I did, but for me it worked.  You will need to find what works for you.  Take it at your own pace, but don't stop implementing WBT strategies and techniques.  There are so many great WBT gems out there.  You don't want to miss one because you stopped digging.

Writing the WBT Way

Writing has never been so easy to teach.  The results are almost effortless.  I never imagined that my students could produce such great writing.  There is nothing like the WBT writing program.

Whole Brain writing is like the perfect recipe.  It takes the right combination of ingredients, in just the right amounts, mixed together on a daily basis to create a masterpiece that causes anyone who experiences it to say, "I must have that recipe!"  In other blog posts I have talked about all of the ingredients in the WBT writing program.  In this post I would like to show you how some of those ingredients came together over a two week period within my writing block to produce some very exciting results.

It was time for our class to begin informative writing.  I gave a lot of thought as to how I wanted to start this unit, and I decided that I definitely wanted to incorporate the compare and contrast Brainies into whatever we did.  We have already used them a lot this year, but I had never asked students to compare and contrast information taken directly from non-fiction informational text.  This seemed like a logical next step.

I began by bringing in a short passage that compared lions and tigers.  The first day we read the passage together using Mirror Words, Brainies, and story telling gestures.  I then had the students take out their red and green pens, and we went through the passage one sentence at a time.  Using Teach Okay, students had to decide if the sentence told about lions, tigers, or both lions and tigers.  They also had to use a because clapper to explain why they made that choice.  If the sentence referred just to lions, they underlined it in red pen.  If it referred just to tigers, they underlined it in green pen.  If it referred to both lions and tigers, then they underlined it in both colors.  This took one full day,

On day two, we began writing.  I was asking students to write two paragraphs.  One paragraph would explain how the animals were the same, and the other would explain how they were different.  Each paragraph had to have a topic sentence, detail adders, and a concluder.  The details had to come from the text and had to be paraphrased.  This one we worked on together.  I wrote  on the board, while students wrote in their journals.  There were a lot of Teach Okays going on as students worked together to paraphrase the ways that the lions and tigers were similar and different.  They shared their paraphrases with the class using Call Outs.  A call Out is used when a student is going to share with the entire class.  The purpose is to engage the entire class in the sharing.  The student stands and says class, followed by Mirror Words.  The student then shares using Brainies and gestures.  The rest of the class repeats both the student's words and gestures.  We spent one day writing our similar paragraph and one day writing our different paragraph.

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about paragraph number two - how lions and tigers are different.  I wanted to use this opportunity to show students how to use the "but/however" Brainie to contrast.  My students already were very familiar with the "but" Brainie.  We had spend a lot of time previously working on it.  We had played the "But Complexor Game" (See the WBT Writing Game for more information on this.)  We had also done numerous Genius Ladders with "but" extenders.  Therefore, it was very easy to model for them how to use the this Brainie to contrast two items.  However, the "however" Brainie was new to them.  I needed to spend some time teaching it in the context of contrasting, before I could expect them to use it in their writing.  So, I decided to use the Genius Ladder for this.  Below is the Genius Ladder that we used.  Students quickly got the idea.  That afternoon a few of them had already started using the "however" Brainie in their red/green writing.  (If you are not familiar with red/green writing, please see my blog post on this topic.)

The next step was to have students work together.  I gave students a new passage about Polar Bears and Brown Bears.  The same process was repeated, except that students did everything with their partners.  I circulated and assisted as needed.  It was amazing listening to the dialogue and watching the Brainies that they were using as they worked together to write their two paragraphs.  

The last step was for students to repeat the same process independently.  I chose a passage about butterflies and moths.  Before they began writing, I introduced them to a new writing rule that was added to our writing wall:  Two sentences in a row never start with the same word.  (You can read more about this wall in my post on red/green writing.)  Below is a picture of the wall.

To assist students with this, I asked them to do a little of their own red/green writing.  Using their green pens, they had to circle the first word of every sentence.  Then it became very simple.  No two circles in a row could be the same.  They thought the rule was very grown-up, and they especially liked using their green pens.  

I did not give students any assistance.  I wanted to see what they could do on their own, after having gone through this process.  I have to say that I was very pleased with the results.  The students did a great job.  They were able to write two indented paragraphs with topic sentences, paraphrased detail adders, and a concluder.  Below is a sample of their writing.  This was done by one of my average students.  Notice that in paragraph two he used the words "however" and "but".  This is something that all but a couple of my very lowest students were able to do.  I would also like to point out that this student drew a smilie face each time he indented.  This is something that I often do during red/green writing.

As you can see for yourself, Whole Brain writing really works!  So what are you waiting for?  Give it a try in your own classroom.  I can promise you that you won't be sorry.