Like many other schools around the country, we perform routine walk-throughs in my building to analyze instruction. To me, what often is missing in classrooms is 1.Dynamic instruction and 2.Student engagement. This is not to say that very good instruction is not taking place in non-WBT classrooms. In some instances it is. Several teachers in my building are budding WBT users. The difference in their instruction from classrooms that do not utilize WBT techniques is clear. First and foremost students visually and verbally do not appear comatose in WBT classrooms. Certainly there are a million ways to engage students in various subject areas...some are more difficult than others. WBT is such an easy way for teachers who struggle with engagement to get their students involved.

Additionally, it can be used for so many aspects of a lesson. From simply providing instructions, to creating and answering higher order thinking questions. Ask yourself this...what makes American education standout from other countries? The answer is the critical and creative thinking of our students! What's funny is that other countries are working hard to implement instruction that models American classrooms, while American is busy doing the opposite. Students cannot be passive learners, they must learn, solve, create, and share! WBT can be utilized to encourage at least 3 out of 4 of those crucial parts of instruction. WBT is a small piece of the whole puzzle, but it's also an effective (I know because I used to use it in my classroom), engaging, dynamic method of instruction that can be used by ALL types of teachers.

So, here is my personal plea...Wake American students up! Get them involved! And please, please stop listening to yourself talk, talk, talk. Why not instead listen to your students learn, learn, learn. Be a Whole Brain Teacher!

Ross,
I agree with you totally. I work at four different school sites and when I do my walk throughs I feel the same way. There is great teaching going on from room to room, site to site. I get even more excited though, when I see students actively engaged and having fun! WBT allows that to happen; students like to talk and move, so why net let them?

Once again I agree with my colleagues on this page. One thing that Rhopple said was that, "stop listening to yourself talk talk talk and let the students learn." Exactly correct. The reason why I switched to Whole Brain Teaching or Power Teaching was because I was sick of students not being able to teach anything back to me that I was teaching for 10 min.

What, because you get up to the classroom to teach, the students will learn it? And if they are not learning it, why are you up there teaching it? What a waste of teaching time you just did! Then you get crabby for them not "paying attention." Oh yeah, you've heard the teachers before... "PAY ATTENTION! DID YOU HEAR ANYTHING I JUST SAID?" So then you call parents and say they were zoning out and drifting off or not paying attention. The problem is, THEY WERE paying attention. It's not their fault.. it's the fault of the teachers for lecture lecture lecture with no student participation. In learning terms, this is called, "cognitive overload." You already lost the students after about 5 minutes. Students don't learn in this manner - in fact, people don't learn in this manner. First, we learn by doing. But second, they learn by engaging each other in teaching conversations. I switched to this: short teaching burst; then, "Please teach your neighbor the three steps.." etc etc. CLAP CLAP "TEACH!". Immediately the students begin talking about what I taught! Then I stop the class.. give them more pieces of information.

Don't listen to the naysayers to this program or say "it's too noisy." Nonsense.. most of them don't know what they are talking about and are trapped in the same method they've been doing.

If anybody is interested, here is how I use it in my classroom:
www.schooltube.com/video/48493/Whole-Bra...yday-Math-curriculum

Jonathan Dale
5th grade teacher
Emmett, Idaho

http://www.kidsatwork5th.com