Hello everyone!

I have occasionally found WBT site in May and ...fell in love with it!!! During the summer I downloaded almost all the e-books and studied them carefully. And finally in September I started WBT with my students!!

I teach English to Russian kids. I have now 7 small groups of kids from kinder to 4th grade. As I have started, I found out that it is not the same to work with kindergarden students and schoolers. They learn in so defferent ways!!!

For the first four days we covered Class-Yes, Teach-ok, 5 Rules, Scoreboard, Hands and Eyes. I also introduced Mirror and Example Popper and began with the Power Pix- we have learned 2 by now.

The kids like to learn in a new way. They begin to understand what I wait from them and they really work hard to get Smilies!!! We even decided to make a competition between the groups.

I love WBT!!!

Svetlana
WBT Teacher from Russia

Thanks for the wonderful report! WBT is great for all students, regardless of level or language!
Deb

Ten finer woo to you Svetlana! It is hard to vary between levels! That is one of the really cool things about WBT! It is so versatile
And works with any age for any subject! Keep us posted!

Svetlana,

Thank you for sharing this! I can't wait to hear from you as your year progresses!

Tiffany
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

Thank you Deb, Rebecca and Tiffany for your kind and supporting comments!

My first WBT week is over. It was easy and difficult at the same time.
It was easy because it IS easy to work with kids using the great WBT tools. It is absolutely wonderful system which has an answer for any question! And it was difficult because I had to control myself all the time. "Don't scold - rehearse!","Don't scold - rehearse!" - that's what I was silently saying to myself many times a day And it helped! I know I have a lot of work to do at this point.

I started Super Speed Reading with some of my groups. They were excited! I didn't expect such reaction! Kids asked to play once again, but I resisted. I don't want to lose their interest. Am I right here?

I also started Genious Ladder. I teach kids to make 'blah' sentences first, as they are different in Russian and English. And I'm eagerly waiting for the next broadcast.

Next week I'm going to introduce Super Improvers Wall. I want to ask when to put stars on it, right at the lesson or after it?

See you on the web next Tuesday!

Svetlana
WBT teacher from Russia

I think when you put the stars up really depends on the kid and the situation. I have a student that gets easily frustrated, angry, and will give up. I have seem him come leaps and bounds since last year. For him, I feel that the feedback needs to be immediate. I also need to use immediate reinforcement with my lower functioning students. The other less needy students can wait until we are able to post them. However, if I don't post them in the moment, I post them either as soon as the lesson is over. Keep up the great work!

Svetlana,

Welcome to WBT. It is very exciting to know that WBT is worldwide! It sounds as if you are doing a great job with implementing the parts you are using so far. As for the Super Speed, are you using Super Speed 100? I have small groups as well. I teach K-5th grade. With my kindergarteners, I am starting with Super Speed Letter and Phonics because they don't know all of the letters yet. With my 1st - 5th graders, we are starting with Super Speed 100. We do the Genius Paragraph and the Super Speed game evey time we meet. I also introduce the Power Pix that I want to use with each grade level as I get to them. I will start the Super Improvers Wall (in my case, cards) on Friday. I have been teaching small groups for three years now. I haven't had any students get tired of doing Super Speed games yet. So my advise is let them play it everyday if it works in your schedule. All it will do is help them learn those letters, sounds, or words that much faster. You always have the Super Speed 1000 if you need to go to it with your older learners.

Good luck to you, and keep us posted on how it is going for you.

Susan Floyd
WBT Intern
2011-12

Susan,
Thanks for welcoming me and your advices. I am using Super Speed 100 with my 3rd and 4th graders. With my kinderegardeners I have started with Super Speed Letters and Phonics and asked their parents to help them at home. Also we started Biffytoons as well.

My first and second graders are new groups who had never learned English, so I decided to start with them Super Speed letters and Phonics too. They covered about 8 levels by now.I've been also introducing sign alphabet to them (I watched it at Farrah Shipley's blog)and we want to try to make gesture words out of gesture letters! I hope it will help the kids to spell words correctly. What do you think of it?

This Friday I started playing Mind Soccer! It was a blast! Two minutes of a game let me see what my kids really remembered for the first two weeks! It's amazing!

With my 3rd and 4th graders we also started reading a book. It was not a Crazy Professor game, I adopted a little. First they read the paragraph silently. second, I asked them to find words they are familiar with and we went through them together. Then, they were reading aloud together with me copying my pronuciation. After that I asked them to read aloud and show what they are reading with gestures. Finally we played Yes/No Way to check their understanding. Thus, they didn't need to translate the text - they understood the meaning of it and had fun at the same time!

That's how itis going for me by now.

Best wishes,

Svetlana
WBT teacher from Russia

Yesterday my kindergardeners gave me 10 finger WOO!!!!

I praised them for doing great job at the lesson and asked them to give each other 10 finger woo. Suddenly they moved their hands towards me making woo! and said: That's because you teach us so well!

I could hardly say a word:)

WBT is fantastic!

Svetlana
A Happy WBT teacher from Russia

Well Svetlana this just proves that someone can teach themselves over the internet. This is a great testament to your "smartness". Great work!

You are doing all of the right things with WBT. Can't wait to meet you some day!

Power to the Teacher!
Chris

Chris,

I'd like to say that I appreciate this a lot! I have a great desire to go on working with WBT and see the results at the end of this school year.

I would love to meet you some day too!

Svetlana
WBT teacher from Russia

Hello everyone!
New report from Russia.
I've been using WBT for almost 3 months already. Sometimes it is going really great but sometimes I feel that something is missed out. That upsets me
Positive things first.
All of my sudents know the 5 Rules, Class-Yes!, Teach-OK!, Mirror, Air Punctuation, Example Popper and the three-peats.
The 3rd and 4th graders like to use gestures while reading. Both them and 2nd graders are mad about Mind Soccer on Fridays.We also do Super Speed Reading and I put stars on the Super Improvers Wall for making new records. My kindergardeners love to count Smilies and Frownies on the Scoreboard and I usually praise them with a small portion of video or Bingo game. With a help of gestures they remember letters and sounds very well and can already read simple short vowel English words, when some of them can't read in Russian yet! All in all it goes fine.

Still there are some negative points. Some of my students go on talking at the lessons. Sometimes they don't pay attention to the frownies appearing at the scoreboard. Some kids don't do their homework, though it was clearly explaned. May be I should go back and rehearse some steps again? I think my problem is that I have to vary between so many levels and have not enough time for preparation.

I miss Coach B's webinars - they inspire me so much! can't wait until January,3.
So that's how it is going with me.

Svetlana
WBT teacher from Russia

Svetlana...one thing that we want to always make sure we are doing is reviewing all of the time. So when you mention that the kids don't respond to you marking the Frowines , here is what you do. Tell them that you are noticing that they are not following Rule 1, and we need to practice it here. You call out, "Rule 1" and they respond. If they do it right give them a Smiley, . If they don't, give them another Frownie, and then say would you like another try? They will most likely say yes and then they do it right so you will give them a Smiley.

Take a few minutes with each part of your day and allow them to practice the wrong and the right way to do things. We need these reminders quite often of how to do things.

Another thought is this...what are you using to reward them for winning the scoreboard game? If it is something that may not interest them, you may want to try something new. I noticed that you are playing Mind Soccer on Fridays. Lately, I have played a for the reward of an extra minute in Mind Soccer. They thought it was the greatest thing. We can give up an extra minute of Mind Soccer for extra hard work through out the week.

Mostly I'd stick with the extra practice with the scoreboard. Make sure that at the end of the day there are approximately 20-25 marks (total for both sides) on the scoreboard. This many marks will motivate them to continue to work hard.

Keep us posted...Power to the Teacher!

Chris

Thanks Chris!
It's always so helpful to have those reminders! Svetlana I too have been reminding my students about the scoreboard and the expectation! There are always a few students that forget that you mean business. It is just about time to jump to the next level...practice cards! If you haven't already started this you might give it a whirl! It really works wonders for your challenges in the classroom! In regards to the homework, are you using the homework model provided from WBT? If so, you might ask other students to do a 4 star homework. This way you can celebrate the students that are going above and beyond, many times students want to jump on that band wagon! This might resolve some of the issues with students not completing the homework. Let us know!

Heather Hansen
Wbt intern
2011/12

Thank you Chris and Heather!
I wanted to answer right away but was too busy preparing for a visit of my American friends to my class.

Chris, I've tried to do what you said about following rules and it worked! We reraly practiced the rules during the lessons before - only at the beginning and sometimes at the end of a lesson. But I can see how important it is - they're becaming more aware and less relaxed. Also they can get more marks at the lesson, it motivates them well as you said.

I use the scoreboard results for reward just as you described. "Lately, I have played a for the reward of an extra minute in Mind Soccer. They thought it was the greatest thing. We can give up an extra minute of Mind Soccer for extra hard work through out the week." It's wonderul to realise that people and kids from different countries feel and think alike!

Heather, I planned to get to the Practice cards level next week. This will refresh them. I just need to find enough place for it on the walls of my tiny classroom. I'm not using the WBT homework model yet - I need to adapt it somehow, as my younger kids can't read and write well in English yet - they are only learning to do it. But I want to try it with my 4th graders, they are skilled enough.

Thank you again for your helpful advices!
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Svetlana
WBT teacher from Russia