Hello,
I'm a teacher in Gwinnett County, Georgia. I stumble upon WBT while searching online for new things to do next year. I love the whole concept. I want to connect with other teachers here who been using this model so I can implement it next year!

Thanks,
Jazmin

I have been using these strategies for about 3 years. I love them and more importantly my students are learning tons and loving them. I would love to connect with you to help implement these strategies. Chris is also doing seminars around my area this summer so I can get send you some more resources.

Hello,
I am in Cherokee County and really want to implement WBT in my Kindergarten class next year. I'd love to hear about how it's worked for you.
Thanks!

Whole Brain Teaching is great for Kindergarten! This was the first full year I used it and I really saw a difference with my students this year, as compared to other years.

The first thing I did was focus on t rules, rules, rules, as we all do every single year. The difference was that the rules included gestures. These are the rules I used:
Rule number 1- Follow Directions Quickly
2-Raise your hand for permission to speak
3- Raise your hand for permission to leave your seat
4- Make smart choices
5- Respect others, respect yourself and respect your school.
Golden rule- Keep your dear teacher happy.
Then I quickly taught them the class/yes technique, hands & eyes and the scoreboard (smile/sad faces). Those are all explained in the WBT downloads and/or webinars.

I taught them teach/ok during the second month of school. I started with calendar time. We use Saxon, which have shapes tags for the date and patterns. We started with
(me)"When I say teach/ok, please teach your partner was a square is. Teach!" (students)"Ok! A square has four equal sides."
(me)"switch!"
(students)"Uh-Oh! Switch! A square has four equal sides."

This technique was awesome! They really learned their shapes! But I did notice that they expected me to dialogue their responses everytime we did teach/ok. So I had to teach them how to teach. It sounds like a lot of work, but it was really fun and I did a lot of modeling.

I would definitely recommend attending a conference, if possible. They really bring everything together, and the instructors are wonderful!

I just signed up for a conference that is coming to my area. I'm so excited! Thank you for the tips. Did you use some of the other techniques such as lines, seats, and papers?
Also, did you involve your parents and was this the only behavior management you needed to use?
Thanks for your input!

I did use other techniques. I do the 'yada-yada' for noise level; lines; I've tried papers, although I can't say I've mastered this area yet. lol! We really engaged our students with gestures and mirror!

My favorite has been the biffytoons. We taught ALL of our sight words and alphabet through gestures(we made a few gestures up, but took the concept from Biffytoons). In fact, one of my friends and team members taped her twins holding up the sight word and using the gestures. She made a copy for all of the kindergarten teachers and we showed it to our students daily. They loved it! It became part of our calendar routine. They would watch the movie and we'd challenge them to say the word and gesture before the kids in the tape. I also taped my daughter doing the gestures and merged hers to make one video (which is included under the Sight words thread, in Florida section). She also made a video to the song Who let the Alphabet Out and used gestures with all the letter sounds. This incorporated so many modalities that it really clicked with our students. I saw a HUGE difference between teaching Sight words and letter sounds with the gestures and without.

As far as parent involvement, absolutely! The behavior cards includes a letter to the parents which tells the student to practice the rule broken that day or a reward letter for being awesome at our rules! This was great because it gives parents the opportunity to reward or practice with their child and isn't the regular letter of complaint. The parents also know the gestures for the sight words and are able to help their kids at home. We intended to make DVD's for all of our kindergarten students, but we never got to it. But we plan to load it unto Moodle which is kind of like an online class for our students and include it on there.

As YES, the scoreboard, rule cards and parents letters were the only class management system I used. In fact, our administrator has brought new teachers, parents, district personnel, etc. through our classroom just to see Whole Brain Teaching in action!

I truly believe in this program and all the added benefits, not just to our students, but the educators as well.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask anymore questions!

Truly,

Noris Aguayo

Thank you for all of the wonderful information. I'll be sure to come to you if I think of any more questions. I look forward to starting these techniques in the fall.