If there are any high school teachers with Whole Brain Teaching questions, please feel free to e-mail me. The year I've been using some elements of Whole Brain Teaching in my Integrated Math, Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus, and AP Calculus classes and I'd be happy to share with you my most successful elements. WBT is not just for "little" kids!

Kristin, I will get my team's Algebra teacher in contact with you. She's middle school, but could really use a math teacher's experience. I just passed on your FACEing book to her, too, my kids LOVE it even though I change it to L.A. stuff. she's interested in more....

I think she'd be interested in some of your gestures...woudl you be able to post some of the most common gestures you use in your course?

Hi Jackie,
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of Algebra 1 gestures because I don't teach Algebra 1 this year. I would be happy to talk with her though. The use of gestures is my favorite part of WBT, especially for high school kids. I used gestures to teach the vocabulary terms conditional statements, converse, inverse, and contrapositive to my Integrated kids yesterday. I know that without the gestures very few students would be able to quickly explain what those terms mean. My advice to your Algebra teacher would be USE LOTS of GESTURES and be creative. If you can't think of good gestures yourself, let the students brainstorm ideas. Well, it's late and I'm off to bed. I'm glad your students like the book. Have a great weekend!
~Kristin

I went to the Yucaipa Whole Brain Teaching conference in January with 2 other new science teachers, and my department has begun implementing Whole Brain Teaching in Chemistry, Anatomy, Earth Science (me!) Physical Science, and Biology co-lab. My 9th graders are really good at "class-yes" and "teach-okay", and we've begun using gestures (see my post in the gestures section). I know the Chemistry/Anatomy teacher says her honors students (mostly 11th and 12th graders) like making up the gestures themselves to teach concepts to their group, much like talking during charades. My freshmen LOVE playing Mind Soccer, and have asked that instead of iPod time, they can win Mind Soccer time if they win the scoreboard (classes of 40 freshmen willing sacrificing time with their iPod to learn instead??? This Whole BrainTeaching game is AWESOME!!!!) And now they're asking other teachers in the Freshmen House to learn how to play Mind Soccer in their classes as well, so English and Math teachers are coming to us with the question "what do the kids mean when they said they're playing soccer in your science class?" and we can spread the ideas of Whole Brain Teaching in our PLC

Jessi ... that's great news! What high school do you teach at? We've been working hard to help middle school and high school teachers. Another idea that you might try is look at SuperSpeed 1000 ... then set up your own reading game with core words in your discipline ... you could peel them out of the index of your textbook ... just set them up in the order that you'll be using them in class ... and, guess what, we have another game as good as Mind Soccer! We'll post it soon ... Balloon Baffler!

Desert Hot Springs High School- we've been trying to get the CAHSEE prep math teachers to use the math game and the READ 180 classes to use the Super Speed reading game, but I don't know if they are or not. I never thought about making my own list though...hmmm...

Looking forward to new game!

Jessi wrote:


Yeah, ditto on that. Can't wait to see the new game.

OH YEAH! I hadn't even thought of using the various vocabulary words for my content......duh! Vocabulary is the most difficult area to get my students to focus on. I can see a soccer game over this year's vocabulary in the very near future!!!

I am new to WBT and have not implemented it into my classroom yet, but will certainly start next year. I recently resolved the gesture issue that I had by leaning upon American Sign Language. Not only do students get to learn a new language, but the signs are already made up and I don't need to spend precious time making up gestures.

I found the following site with 5 second Quick Time videos showing a variety of secondary mathematics signs and other subject area signs.

http://www.needsoutreach.org/Pages/sl.html

I hope this is helpful.

Thank you for reading.

Mr. C

I am also new to Whole Brain Teaching. I am using it in a 7th grade math class and I find that coming up with the gestures is sometimes hard for me. I love your web site for sign language - I am definitely going to use it!

I hope to be at the local high school next year. I plan on using WBT there, too. I already have one of the science teachers there interested in it, as well as the math department chair here at my middle school. I love how it has helped me have better classroom management and how it has helped the students learn more. I can't wait to get better at this.

I am planning on attending the Nsational Conference coming up in June. I am excited to be able to learn more right from the people who developed the techniques. This is great and "powerful" stuff. Thanks to all!

mthtchr52 -

I also teach 7th grade math!! I have found that using the gestures to create "concept" definitions, has been the most helpful for my students. It has helped them remember problem solving methods, and feel confident in tackling those "wonderful" state assesment problems! We do this by practicing stringing together many gestures and then practicing these OFTEN! It was very sucessful for middle school students, and I have some high school teachers interested in trying it out for next year.

Chris - actually going to try to use the Super Speed Math sheets as part of an action research plan i'm now doing for Louisiana College. As a new Algebra 2 teacher, can't believe how my 11th and a few 12th graders can't multiply and divide which hurts them terribly with fraction skills that we have in almost every unit/section of algebra II of course. To my question now... any research ya'll have compiled that i may use to see how much these do help improve basic math skills to students? I'm noticing they do get further down the rows the more they play! But any hard stat research would be great though I will be pre/post testing etc.. which you are probably familiar with. I'm also using the words too - 1000 - when we just need a break from numbers! Thanks to anyone who can also give me some creative gestures for algebra 2 contents - they think i'm completely crazy but they are participating and remembering!

I teach chemistry at Yuma High School in Arizona. Discovered WBT on the Internet a couple of weeks ago. The other chem teacher who showed it to me said she didn't know if this was insane or ingenious. After watching the video of Chris Biffle in the college class, I agreed with her but it all began to make sense. We have an advisory period and mine consists of freshmen so I figured I would try it with them first. It was fantastic!! They learned the 5 rules in no time and when we did teach-okay, they all turned and were teaching with gestures. I thought maybe they all watched the same video and were doing it just to please me.
I am going to try it with my Gen. chem classes this week and as I get more confident, I will introduce my Accelerated chem students and possibly AP chem.
My son who attends my school is friends with one of my freshmen advisory students. He told me she said to him that day, "we did something really weird in your dad's class today but it was fun."
Looking forward to the remainder of the school year.