Shake Up Your Classroom with WBT by Kim Reza

Shake Up Your Classroom with WBT

Dying to keep your students engaged? 

Do your students look confused when you’re talking? How would you like them to hang on to your every word?  You can solve all of this, by simply implementing Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) into your practice.

Whole Brain Teaching is an approach designed toward maximizing student engagement and focusing on the way the brain is really designed to learn. It is an integrated method combining effective classroom management and pedagogically sound approaches to student engagement that are effective with a wide range of student learning populations.

 “The first step in learning another language is to internalize the code in the same way you assimilated your native language, which was through commands.”

-James Asher

In my class, students need to be presented with a variety of ways to keep them engaged. If I’m doing all the work, they’re not learning. The students in my classroom learn 90% of their vocabulary with Whole Brain Learning. Academic language is not their “native” language. They need the vocabulary in order to make connections and comprehend. There are several strategies for Whole Brain Teaching; however, I only use the strategies that best suit the needs of my kids.

“Tell me and I forget. 

Teach me and I remember. 

Involve me and I learn.” 

-Benjamin Franklin

First Steps to get started:

Micro-teach with Gestures.

This means giving one small bit of information that the students will reteach to each other. It requires the teacher to be animated and use gestures as he or she teaches. As an example, if we were teaching Author’s Purpose, the teacher would begin the process by introducing a very small bit of information such as "The author’s purpose is the reason" After the students have learned this small bit of information you build on this idea. The following TEACH-OK segment would be "why the author writes." I continue building so on and so forth until all the purposes have been taught or at least all the vocabulary that I wish to cover.  Proximity is important in the beginning. I have the students sit on the carpet (yes, 4th-6th graders on the carpet!), so they can self-correct their behavior, improve their focus, actively engage on a task, and enhance their outcome.

 

Tune in next month to see how I keep my students engaged while doing Whole Brain Teaching.

For the love of teaching, 

Kimberly Reza