Planning

It is really hard to believe that next week is spring break and that I am right at a couple of months short of completing my first full year as a Whole Brain Teacher.  It has been an amazing year!  I have learned so much as an WBT intern.  I am so grateful to Nancy, my mentor, and to Coach B. for all of their help and encouragement.  Over the course of this school year I have written about a variety of techniques, skills, and strategies that you would find in a WBT classroom.  For this blog I have decided to answer a question that a lot of people have asked me this year:  Do you find that planning is easier or harder when you are doing Whole Brain Teaching?

The answer to that question is simple.  It is so much easier!  O.k, to be honest, it was harder in the beginning, but that was because everything was so new to me and I had so much to learn.  It took time to figure out how all of the pieces fit together.  Now, I can honestly say that I spend a lot less time planning than I used to.  I think that this is mainly due to the fact that the structures (The five step lesson, Power pics, The Genius Ladder, Teach/Okay, Mirrors, Red/Green Writing, Brainies,  the use of Sentence Frames etc.) are already there.   I just have to plug my lessons into them.  I have found that with so many tools, I can easily weave instruction of a new concept into multiple parts of my day.

A perfect example of this is a unit that we just completed last week.  Our class spent two weeks learning about Point of View and Dialogue.  The first week I focused on point of view.  The five step lesson format made planning very easy.  I began by creating a Power Pic for point of view.  Deciding on my question and answer was very important, because I knew that it was these two things that would guide my instruction.  Below is my Power Pic:

                                                               

Question:  What is point of view?
Answer:  Point of view is who is telling the story:  first person, a character; second or third person, the author.
Gestures:  Shrugging shoulders and then holding up one finger at a time for each of the three persons.

I knew that each day that week I would begin with my question and answer.  When thinking about how to expand my lesson, my first step was to create a sentence frame.  I use sentence frames on a regular basis.  They provide a support and structure for my students, especially my ELL students, as they share during Teach Okays and Call-Outs.  I chose the following frame:  This story is being told from ________________.  I know this because ________________.  When planning any lesson I automatically include opportunities for students to prove their answers using a "because clapper".

This led to the question, "What do I expect my students to use for proof?"  I quickly decided to use the WBT concept of "Power Words".  I created an anchor chart with a tree map.  On the tree map I placed my power words for first second and third person, along with my sentence frame.  Below is a picture of it.  This anchor chart stayed in the front of my room and became a reference for my students during the entire unit.  Below is a picture of it.

                   

Once this was done, the rest was very easy.  The main way that I taught the concept was to read short paragraphs and using Teach/Okay ask the students to share from what point of view the text was being told and how they knew.  I would remind them to use the sentence frames on the anchor chart.  For proof they would say things like, "I know this because I heard the Power Words he, she, and their.  For a couple of days I read the same scenarios, but from different points of view.  Students would use these same sentence frames to discover the point of view that the books they were reading were being written from.  At the end of independent reading time, students would first share with their partners using Teach/Okay and then with the class using Call-outs.

The last step of the five step lesson plan is critical thinking.  This is usually done through writing.  During Red/Green writing I gave my students a short story about a cat named Cupcake who ran away from a campground and walked 150 miles to get back home.  The story was told from third person.  I asked my students to rewrite it from first person, the point of view of Cupcake.  We did some oral writing practice first, and then they began.  The students did a really nice job.  Below is one of their stories.

During this first week, something happened that I was hoping for.  I shared a text with quotation marks.  The character speaking used the word "I'.  Some of my students immediately thought that this had to be first person.  This led to the introduction of quotation marks.  It was a perfect lead-in.  In the past I had always struggled with the best way to teach quotes to second graders, but this year it was easy.  I began with the Quotation Mark Brainie.  My students were familiar with it, because I had previously pointed quotes out to them in text and they had used the Braine, but they really did not understand this Brainie.  I decided that the Brainie would serve in a way as my Power Pic.  This led to me deciding upon the following question and answer:

Question:  What are quotation marks?
Answer:  Quotation marks are talking marks.  They go around the exact words that come out of a character's mouth.
Gesture:  The gesture for the quotation mark Brainie.

Over the course of the week I gave students short stories with lots of quotation marks.  We would do what I called the one minute drill.  They had one minute to underline all of the quotes.  (Of course, I first demonstrated how to do this.)  They then had to read the passage with their partner using their gestures and Brainies, with an emphasis on making sure that the quotes were done properly.  (This had also been modeled numerous times.)  I then asked students to tell their partners (Teach/Okay) the point of view that the story was being told from (Students used the sentence frames on the anchor chart.) and then called on a student to share using a Call-Out.  We then focused on the quotes.  Using High Five Switch, the students had to take turns reading the quotes in order and telling who said it and how they knew.  As they shared, they were expected to use their Brainies, especially quotation marks.  I emphasized the comma and using a capital Brainie for the first word at the beginning of a sentence inside of the quotation marks.  Of course I provide them with the following sentence frame:  ______________ said __________________.  I know this because ___________________.  For their proof they usually said something like, "I know this because it said _______ said after the quotation marks."

As I did with point of view, I asked the students to find quotes in the books that they were reading and to share at the end of independent reading time, using the sentence frames that I had provided.

They were doing so well with all of this, that I decided to take quotation marks to a Genius Ladder and see how well they did at it.  Below is the Genius Ladder that I used.

The students had a really good time with the simple sentence that I chose.  At the Genius level students were asked to write a conversation with themselves and their mom.  Most of my students were correctly using quotes, not forgetting the comma before or after the quote, and were capitalizing the first word inside the quotation marks.  This can be attributed to all of the oral writing that they had been doing with quotation marks.  I was really impressed with how well many of them did at changing paragraphs when they changed speakers.  My students were already very familiar with paragraph form and the indent Brainie, so this wasn't that difficult for them.  You may have noticed that at the extender level I introduced my students to the dependent clause.  This is another Brainie that we had not previously talked about.  Prior to this time, they were not ready for it.  They still needed more work on it.  It will definitely be the focus of our next few Genius Ladders, but they are beginning to catch on.  It just amazes me the caliber of writing that you can get from second graders and what they are actually capable of understanding.  Prior to finding a Whole Brain Teaching I would have never imagined that my students would be writing conversations so effortlessly with quotation marks and in paragraph form, nor would I have believed that they would be able to correctly write complex sentences with dependent clauses.

As a side note I wanted to point out that towards the end of this time we began an explanatory text unit in writing.  Right away one of my students raised her hand and said, "We are going to be writing from second person."  It was one of those moments when all I could do was say a quick prayer in my head, thinking God for Whole Brain Teaching.

I hope that you have found this look into my planning process helpful.  Happy teaching!