I am beginning my third year of teaching with this WBT technique! I would love some ideas/advice on how to break up teaching writing into chunks like the process calls for! Also, how do you implement certain aspects of the method into your classroom and what is your success ratio? Any suggestions will be appreciated and welcomed!! Thanks.

We definitely have something for you! I am putting the finishing touches on College Talk. This program teaches writing using the WBT techniques. It helps take the intimidating feeling out of writing for the students, and making it more like a construction project done with a partner.

Watch for it on your friendly, local Wholebrainteaching.com download shelves soon!

Awesome news! I will definitely be looking for this new download as I teach both reading and Language Arts!

WOW! I am very excited to not only have discovered this program, but to find that it is being adapted to 7th grade English....I am a special education teacher, and though I haven't had a chance to use the program yet, I will be using it with my students when school starts in September. I look forward to seeing more about this.

This is how I incorporate WBT into my typical lesson: We start with some gestures and basic concepts. Next take some notes, but only one concept at a time. After each concept, we review by using the gesture and teach/okay. Continue with each concept and build with teach okay. It goes in a cycle throughout class- 1) learn gestures 2) take notes 3) teach/okay 4) repeat. Finally when all notes are done, students use the notes to teach their partner by making the gestures and reading from their notes. (If you use cornell notes, one partner asks questions and one answers.) Finally, I finish with either a partner assignment or an individual assignment for practice. This might be 5-10 minutes of quiet or low talking work. Then students teach their partner from that assignment. Last review all the gestures and concepts; same as the beginning of the lecture.
I also teach 7th grade Language Arts so I would be happy to share and hear your ideas for gestures and lessons.

Thank you for your comments. I am awaiting final word on a new position that would be strictly 7th and 8th grade Language Arts for special ed. students in an SDC class for learning disabilites. I would be interested to know if anyone in California has developed hand gestures for our ELA standards. I will most certainly use your suggestions to begin the school year.

Jackie is the master of this. I have a few myself. I will start posting some gestures soon. Some that come in handy for any content is similarities and differences. Many of us use this one. Put your hands together with fingers crossed (like your'e praying) for "similar" and hands in fists together for different.
Some gestures that I use often also are for genres of writing (novel, novela, essay, biography, etc.) I will brainstorm for a while and post again.

Can't wait!

ESL Middle School Language teacher here.... Just to share an idea.... I taught the kids the ASL alphabet, and we are using some letters to help us with gestures for the parts of speech. I struggled to teach all 9 last year and still had difficulty. I think my kids know them already!!! And it's only been a week! HURRAY! This is FUN and it's working! I am thrilled....
A noun is (I point to myself for) person, point to the floor for place, make a thing with my hands, and idea - I point to my head and make a thought going out for idea. It's fabulous. I can share the rest of anyone would like to know.

Next - writing....?

DesertMoon,
I really appreciated the idea of using ASL, it is something I always wanted to learn, I guess now I have a really good reason to learn! I would appreciate your sharing any other gestures, etc. Many of my students are ELL and learning disabled...the more I have worked with them in the past, the more sure I am that the concerns are more ELL than LD, in origin. I work in Sacramento, where all of our schools have high populations of ELL...the programs that work for them work for all students....and I am so into benefiting all of my students.

Next Writing? that would be wonderful also...!

Hurray for WBT! I am a new teacher, began classes last week. I teach four sections of Language Arts and two (remedial) Reading classes to 7th graders. I have 3 challenging classes where I have to 'beef' up the scoreboard. Overall, I am shocked to find how easy this program works! Thank you everybody. For any other new teachers wondering if this may work for you, THIS METHOD REALLY WORKS EFFECTIVELY!! Total control of the classroom and fun in the process. Next week I will bring a duck call, I have already lost my voice. Thanks again all you mentors and 'encouragers' out there, and God Bless!!!!!!!

I would also like to hear of suggestions for writing. That is an area I really want to focus on this year.

I will post my PARTS OF SPEECH to the GESTURES link when I write them up! They are so easy, though... and I am using ASL for examples of prepositions - the real ASL words: on, up, next to, whatever I can find on the startasl.com link. I also use this one at home, but it is not coming up at school: www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi

Hope this helps in the meantimne!

Thanks for that website. It's really nice to have a little video clip showing how to do it.