So far, I have watched about 10 different whole brain teaching videos of students participating in a variety of ways. I am new to WBT and was wondering what is done to have secondary students begin a reading activity, or to get students into collaborative work groups (most activities in WBT seem like they are in pairs)? Can anyone recommend strategies that work with these activities?

I really think that if you watch the Crazy Professor video that is one way to help with your reading question. Even though the kids are elementary, it can be done in secondary also with that special twist that you secondary teachers use. Any time kids can get a chance to be goofy in you system...that is a small piece of teacher heaven.

I'll defer the collabrative secondary question to some other colleagues.

This is just a small idea that I took from some other whole brain teachers. When I had my kids read in groups of four the other day I clapped and said "read" and they clapped and said "okay". This is the same idea as "teach"/"okay", but it cues them to a different activity instead.
I know that some whole brain teachers use reciprocal reading or reciprocal teaching along with teach/okay and it works nicely. You just have to explain each role ahead of time; maybe give them a handout that describes each. I believe the different roles are usually summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. You give them a set amount of the text to read and then when they are done, they do their jobs. I haven't used it much, but I plan on using more of it this year. It is nice because the kids are in a group of four and they keep each other accountable. I think giving the kids specific roles to do in their reading assignments makes them engaged and it lends itself nicely to teach/okay because they read and work in chunks instead of reading the entire passage at once.
If anyone has gestures for these roles- summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting- I would love a suggestion.

Reciprocal Teaching is a great instructional strategy that we do at our school through AVID. Here are the gestures that one teacher uses for the different student-roles:

Predicting - holding a magnifying lens [they read for clues for future facts/events]
Visualizing - painting a picture [they picture the text]
Clarifying - skim through a book [they identify unknown words that need to be defined]
Questioning - question mark [they write Level 2-3 questions from Costa]
Summarizing - plus sign [they SUMmarize the text]

Hope that helps!

Here is the guide I give my students for reciprocal reading if we are using informational text. If it is a story, the picturing can change to predicting.

I am not sure why it will not let me attach it. Well, if any of you would like me to send it to you email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it