OK, I have most things down BUT I can not seem to shorten my "talk" time. HELP, short of scripting everything is there a hint. I do love Farrah's style of saying things three times maybe that's the trick. I found this my biggest weakness and would love to solve this before school starts.
Thank you all, hope everyone has smooth sailing

It is really all about practice.

Look and or think about what you are about to say. Give them three or four sentences, and then have them teach-ok. If is a really important point they can take a note, or whatever you want them to do. Next hit the next sentence or three, teach-ok again.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

It does take time. Relax.

Thank you Jeff, I found myself last year talking way to long and once I lapsed into bad habits from old school teaching I had trouble finding what you suggested that 3 to 4 sentence limit. I will practice, practice practice on my pet beagles before school starts:-)

Annette:laugh:

It is really easy to lapse into old habits. The most important thing is not to kick yourself over it. Just practice. It will become easier and easier.

This is hard for me too! I found that I really need to study what I am presenting and make sure that I identify the most important information. Otherwise, I can have them "teaching" and "mirroring" when it is not necessary.

Roxi,
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

A

Annette, I see that there has many helpful responses to this thread. I have to stress to you that, saying things three times and allowing students to work on beating their personal record is key!! I have realized, this week, that stopping to repeat things three times reminds me to visit the scoreboard and demand hand and eyes. My first week back has been so productive! Much more productive than in the previous years..


Heather Hansen
WBT Intern
2011/12

Oh my wibbeteers! You are so major helpful. I am practicing at home on the dogs. I do believe repeating things will help and calling , Heather, for those hands and eyes more often will do the trick. I just know there were so many times I'd finish a lesson and feel so down hearted that I sounded like an old boring said too much teacher.
I'll try hard to apply all my helper hints--thanks all
Annette.

I want to cut in here and clarify the repeating things three times. In some of my older vidoes you see me repeating things three times...the exact same thing, and the pace was really slow. What I found, after wonderful coaching from Coach B was that I could still get the repetition in without dragging it out like that so the pace would be faster. So the "three times" would look like this:

1: Students watch and listen to you say and do the gesture for the concept. (hands and eyes)
2: Mirror: they mirror your gestures while you say the concept.
3: Mirror Echo: they mirror and repeat your words and gestures.

Then you do a teach/ok! This also helped with my "talk time" because I knew that the three steps above would take between 30-45 seconds.

HTH
Farrah Shipley
WBT Kinder
Co-Director Model Classrooms K-3

I think as teachers, we all like to talk. Shortening our talk time takes practice from all of us. Thanks Farrah for the refresher with the repeat 3x.

Rebecca

As always Farrah you are my star mentor. Thanks, for all your help in my "talk to long" problem. I hope to have this perfected this year. I do believe using and keeping the 5 step lesson in front of me will help. As I said you are a blessing, ten finger lightening wooooooo.
Annette

Worst case, do what I did: www.habitchange.org

It's the MotivAider, and silently reminds you at an interval set by you to do whatever you associate with the reminder. In my case, I started using it to remember to use the Scoreboard, then to do Teach-OK.

WBT Intern 2011-2012

Farrah and Jeff - THANK YOU!
I've been re-reading all the WBT ebooks and noodling over my first unit, trying to figure out how to better structure it for WBT. I did a fair job implementing the 5 Rules, the ScoreBoard, and gestures, but......you know what I'm going to say.....didn't use Teach-OK and microlectures as well as I'd hoped. So that's my focus this coming semester, and I'm going to take your suggestions to heart. I DO want to plan thoroughly, but DON'T want to obsess, either.

Based on your two posts, I think I'm going to review my existing lesson plans and just make notes as to WHERE I want to do Teach-OK. That, combined with your suggestion above, I think will do the trick nicely.

So thanks!

- Jen

It is hard. I have actually practiced my lessons in the mirror the day before teaching to try to get down to that 3-4 sentence plan. I have found that the Power Pix helped me a lot! Using the format that is there in the lesson and the 5 step lesson plan really helped me get in to the "grove" of talking less. For me, having all those Power Pix lessons in place gave me a type of visual as to what I was working toward. Then the 5 step lesson plan fell into place.

Susan Floyd
WBT Intern
2011-12

I agree that the PowerPix are a powerful tool - BUT - there aren't any yet for high school Physics! I do have ambitions of making my own as I go, but once school starts, well...we'll see! Maybe this will be my next summer's project, if I don't get them made during the year.... If I DO generate some, I will post them here, but no promises!

- Jen

For those of you who have had the opportunity to attend a WBT conference...
Remember the 3 chairs for Teach-Ok?
1st chair: Class-yes
2nd chair: Teacher speaks briefly
3rd chair: Teach-Ok
Repeat over and over and over!!!

When in doubt, shorter chunks with more reps are more effective than longer segments with fewer reps.

Remember, if a student can teach it to someone else, s/he is internalizing it, and the reps send the info deep down into long term memory!

Practice, videotape yourself and play it back, check your chunking with a timer to see how long you are actually rambling on!!!

WooHoo!

Deb Weigel
Co-Director, WBT Model Classrooms