Arizona,

Currently, we lead the forum postings, but I haven't heard much from my fellow Arizonans lately. How did first quarter go?

Let's share our success stories with the world!

YeeHaw!
Deb

I had a T4S observation a few days ago ( for those of you who don't know what it is It's when you get observed by 3-4 teachers or principals in the district and have to follow specific things such as students sharing, 80% of students being engaged in the learning, key vocabulary used, the objective stated etc. all this must be accomplished in a 20 minute time frame and if you hit all the things your suppose to your highly effective) anyway, I used WBT techniques I did mirrors, teach okay, we also did the 5 step lesson plan on cause and effect. Well of course I was a bit nervous but my kids were fantastic and after about 15 minutes I heard one person tell another I'm going to put my clipboard away and just watch and when my 20 minutes was almost up I over heard one of the principals tell another it's time to go and the other replied " this is so cool I don't want to go I want to see what happens next!" And of course the best thing of all my kids were having fun learning. I had a smile on my face the rest of the day.

First quarter was pretty good. Got a lot of the basic stuff in place. Started a behavior RTI class in the afternoons where I take the 12 worst behaving 8th graders. Scoreboard worked like magic, of course!

Next quarter I might be doing a voluntary Saturday mini-WBT workshop after showing my Principal and Academic Coach and them loving it.

dsudia,

I am interested in your RTI class and the WBT strategies that are working well for those students. In my classroom, I have two students who do not have respect for the teacher and do not follow directions when given. The scoreboard does not excite them and I am ready to move them into the independents group and begin the Bullseye game. What has worked for you and your students that might work for mine?

Thanks for sharing,

Laura Caisse
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

First, before you move them to the Independents, are you using the Practice Cards? Part of the power of the Independents is that they already will not like staying for 2-4 minutes to do rules practice, and so them getting a card because their friend did really bums them out and makes them want to get off the team. Also, they might have more respect for the Scoreboard once they start getting practice cards.

Try practice cards before you go to Independents if you haven't already. It's a loooooong year.

I did move much faster than the usual recommendations in that I ran Scoreboard Level 1 for about 2 weeks before introducing the Guff counter (because it was needed!), then introduced white practice cards after about a month, and that's lasted me through first quarter. I'm introducing purple practice cards start of second quarter because they're ready to start earning off their white cards by doing well, I feel. I started Independents about three weeks ago, two weeks after I introduced practice cards. It has been extremely powerful, but it's mostly powerful because the other pieces are in place.

Biffle put it really well at one of the conferences: We all focus on those problem kids at the beginning of the year and think, what can I do about that kid? How can I tackle his problems now and stop him from misbehaving? But that's not what the Scoreboard is about. The Scoreboard is RTI in and of itself, Level 1 will get almost all your kids, in this case it sounds like all but 2. Level 2 might take care of them, then Level 3 might get them if Level 2 doesn't, then Level 4, etc. The reason to not just start at Level 4 is that Level 1 takes the majority of your kids and puts them on your side. They're not just there and being good, they become your teaching assistants in keeping the other kids in line.

My students now will tell me to put someone on the Independents when they have been acting poorly and scoring me lots of points. They effectively ostracize the poorly behaving student. That sounds awful, but I can tell a kid day and night to tuck in his shirt, and he won't. The minute the other students start suggesting he get put on the Independents, he says, "I don't want to be on that team!" and stops. That only works because the other students have full buy-in on the Scoreboard, and the Practice Cards and Guff Counter are in full play.

So, you're asking what works with the worst of the worst kids? The exact same system, no changes, just a little accelerated.

Finally, are you rocking a Super Improvers wall? I have a 14 year old gang member who was arrested last week for shoving a teacher come in today because he went a whole week with no discipline issues because he wanted to put stars up on his Super Improvers wall. He is excellent for me.

It still blows my mind that this hard hood kid who has had guns put to his head several times is super stoked about drawing stars on a colored piece of paper for no reward, and that is more powerful than all of the Scoreboard levels in getting him to behave better.

So this post is super late in the game, but I thought I'd share anyhow

I was selected (read: didn't have a choice about whether or not ) to be filmed teaching in a national training/promotional video for a Success For All initiative, and the filming date was about 2 weeks after I discovered the secrets to Teacher Heaven and implemented the major components in my room.

My P accompanied the film crew in, and this was the first time she had seen WBT in action. She said she was "absolutely blown away" by my students' engagement level and the depth of the lesson with such a quick pace. The crew said they expected to have to do a few takes in order to get the students sharing their ideas with each other in the "right" way but were shocked that they were fully focused on their partners and using all of the vocab, etc. without any reminders.

I take zero credit for the success of this event; I can wholeheartedly say that my students shined because of WBT!!!

Tomorrow is our last day, but I am already outrageously excited to implement WBT fresh from the start next year... Oh Yeah!