Ignoring bad behavior didn't make it stop, but neither did it derail the train. I have a couple of students who are determined to get me to focus on them, but I have been more stubborn than them this week: I am not going to implement Level 2 until the end of January unless absolutely necessary. Not being able to resort to escalating consequences is a new way of thinking for me. Through it all, I am seeing that I can teach and students can stay engaged, even if one or two students is making weird noises or calling out occassionally, as long as I don't give the behavior any clout. I have had to be very strategic about when to have students gesture/recite a rule in response to an infraction and when to give myself a point on the scoreboard. Sometimes I'm doing these things in response to real problems, sometimes in response to imaginary problems, but rarely in response to saboteurs.

Students are having a variety of reactions to my apparent change in personality. Some are lapping up all the sap I've been offering: "What's Mind Soccer?" one student called out to me as I walked through the multi-use room before school. Some are totally engaged and eagerly mirroring every move I make. Some look exhausted from time-to-time. Even those tired looking students are easily re engaged with reminders to gesture or with a brief class rehearsal of expected behavior. I'm hoping this isn't just a honeymoon.

Next instructional step for me: complexors. I need to correlate the complexors in The Writing Game with the grammatical structures in our English language development materials to see if I will need to make addition sentence frames.

WBT is definitely going to make your students tired if you're doing it right, hahahaha! I love it when they still mirror even when they don't have to.

That's good that you are not panickly jumping to step 2 because of those few high maintenence students. Something I learned this week was to make them your leaders. I know that may sound crazy b/c they've been giving you nothing but trouble, but even if you can get them to do one positive thing, and give them credit for it, they may be more willing to particpate in class. Another thing I've learned throughout this year is you don't have to do every single step in order. Okay.....I'm not trying to go against the levels BUT, if your class or classes are anything like mine, most of them get completely into teach-okay and all the gestures. Those couple of stronger personalities I have jumped all the way to level 5, Bull's Eye Game. One child especially--I started hearing about his behavior two years ago! Because most of his classmates didn't need me to jump to a new level, we started a dialogue about why he always felt like he was getting in trouble. He knew that all his teachers said he talked back, but he was not seeing it for himself, so we focused our first game on that. And like Chris and Jackie taught me, it's not going to erase all the behavior, but the best side-effect is that you will see it less and less. He is now more aware of when he is talking back and because he wanted to get the highest rating, we definitely saw an improvement in our teacher-student relationship and student-class relationship.

Keep it up, JBASS!!! Mind Soccer rocks!!!!!

Thanks for the tips. I do need to start using student leaders.

JBASS,
It will come together if you keep plugging on! Keep me posted on what happens! Enquiring minds want to know....

Best Wishes!