I have a huge problem after I say hands and eyes, we do basket,basket and basket. They are fine and then "blink", they get distracted by somebody who is talking or oop's my shoe, or look there is a fly in the room - who knows, but the hands and eyes gets a pause and I've lost them.

So, I tried hands and eyes, faces and places (hands up by our face thumbs in about eye level and then places, tap hand in palm of their hand in the middle to indidicate they are in the center of the carpet square where they sit).

We practiced today and I got more focus. I am still concerned I am not taking things in small enough chunks, or micro lecturing. But I want to get the concept of the learning accross before the mighty oh yeah or other WBT signals? We have great days like today and not so hot days, were working on it.
Annette:cheer:

Annette,

You know girl...don't be so hard on your self! One of the great things about WBT is that in the end it is YOUR CLASSROOM! If you don't use the exact words or the exact phrasing IT'S COOL!!!! The concept and procedures are the basis!

For example...in my classroom...we do the 5 rules but we have a BIG RULE!!!!! LISTEN WHEN YOUR TEACHER IS TALKING!!! We also do a game with getting our pencils out..after pencils pencils pencils I count to 10...we don't try to break records we just do it in 10 seconds...now the great thing is is I can count fast or slow...so IT IS MY CLASSROOM!!!

You can do it and have faith in yourself! My kinders do the teach/ok but still repeat verbatim in unison what I taught in my micro-lecture! It is just how kinders function. Most of my subjects are like this. Where it begins to look more like ACTUAL WBT is listening comprehension when they have to listen to a story and retell the story or teach a concept from the story and come up with examples! In the end though they are learning and interacting and EXCITED TO PARTICIPATE IN CLASS...and they are all doing it while under control!!!!

So...keep it up girl!!! You will get it down!!!

Farrah Shipley
2010 WBT Intern

Speaking of teach/ok... I have a few questions about getting the kids to effectively teach each other. Farrah, I was glad to read your comment about witnessing "actual WBT" when you have your kids teaching about comprehension. That's exactly the type of conversation I long to hear between the kids. However, I think they are so used to merely repeating my micro lesson that I'm struggling to get anything else out of them. I also think this is due to the fact that I'm nervous about setting my expectations too high for the WHOLE group when using teach/ok; while I do have many kids who could reach my expectations, I also have 7 ESL kids who struggle to just do the "repeating" type of teach/ok.

Would you (or ANYONE) be willing to share some teach/ok topics that might allow me to get the most out of it? For example, Farrah mentioned having the kids teach their partners by retelling parts of the story. Any other suggestions?

Thanks so much!

Ok...let me see...these are just a few that my kiddos are using right now

Phonics
---rhyming words...have them example pop some words that rhyme with what ever word you give them
--compound words....example pop some compound words and have them break them apart with their partner
---syllables...have them say words...their own words and figure out how many syllables are in the words
---example pop words that begin with a certain sound

Math
---example pop ways to make the number five using apples.. (EX: 4 apples plus 1 apple)
---example pop things in the classroom that are certain shapes
---example pop different things we might count by 10's, 5's, 25's...etc

Reading
--using biffytoons...example pop sentences using the sight words

HTH

Farrah

I love using teach/ok to review concepts the day after a lesson or even many days after a lesson. We are all about mastery of concepts at our school, so while these concepts have already been introduced, reviewing them using teach/ok allows them to be the experts. For instance, while in a 4th grade class, we reviewed great than, less than, and equal to.

I have also used teach/ok with vocabulary.

I believe that the possiblities are endless!! Teach? Okay!

WOW...I am even more proud of my kinders...we just finished teaching addition. Greater than, less than, and equal to was 3 weeks ago. I knew we taught ahead of K grade level but I don't guess I realized just how far ahead.

Farrah
2010 INTERN

To add some critical thinking to your Teach! OKay!~ check out the brain toys in the EBook. There are many tools you can use for retelling, comparing/contrasting, giving examples, etc. For advanced Teach! Okay for reading comprehension, check out the Crazy Professor reading game. All will take your kiddos to the next level:)! for those ELLS who need a little extra help~ partnering them up with an English only student and using helpsies. The greatest help is giving those EL's the opportunity to practice their Oral Language which is what they are doing when they do the Teach! Okay!
Hope this helps:)