Dear Special Education Teachers,
The Whole Brain Teaching techniques on this site are for you because if you have students with special needs then you have challenging students, whole brain teaching offers several techniques for you to use on those challengers and if you have students with special needs then you also need strategies that activate all areas of the brain and key into all seven modalities of learning, guess what the whole brain teaching techniques tap into all areas of the brain and all the learning modes. I encourage every special education teacher out there to download all the games and books, availible free from this site, read up and think about how they can help you in your class. If you have any questions as to how to modify them for your smaller group setting or for the differing levels of your classroom please post them here and I will give some suggetions of how I have modified the techniques or used them in my special education classroom.

What gestures have you used to help the children in reading?

As far as using gestures to improve reading, before we begin any reading selection be it social studies, science or lang arts. we do a story walk and I pick out key words that are new to the students. Then during our story walk we talk about these words and come up with gestures that make sense for us for that particular selection. The students then teach eachother the new vocab word and the gesture. Once the story walk is over we read the story together and if a student gets stuck on a word the rest of the group helps the student with a gesture.

Further, in decoding we use gestures to learn letter sounds and letter combinations and word blending. In word blending we cross our midline with our right in a fist thumb up, the first sound is the thumb and then each following sound goes to the next finger, once we have used each sound and crossed the midline again, we finish it with another fist at the end. c a t /c/ right hand left shoulder, thumb up /a/ right hand thumb up, pointer finger up in the middle of the body /t/ thumb two fingers up right hand at right shoulder, hand goes into a fist say the word.

Other gestures:
/ar/ aaaarrr like a pirate swing fist and make a pirate face.
/sh/ finger to lips shhhhh
/th/ thumb up
/wh/ point to lips to remember the w
/ing/ Mr. Ing Mr. Ing Mr. I.N.G. /ang/ Mrs. Ang Mrs. Ang Mrs. A.N.G
/ir/ /er/ /ur/ three fingers up to remember they all say /er/
/ch/ a little rummba dance like both fist in front head bob with
each chchchchchch
/ow//ou/ shaking hand as if just hit by a hammer
/oo/ /ew/ /ue/ ewwwwww looking at hand as if filled with goo
/oi/ fist to hand make an oink oink like a pig
/oo/ oo oo like foot point to foot
/aw/ shake head like your disappointed as you say the sound
for all the long vowels we stretch out our arms and say loooong vowels say thier own names.

We made up a few of these in class as they come up in our word study some we have borrowed, I have found the kids love to make up gestures and really get into it when they are a part of process. Hope this is helpful, any questions just let me know.
Jason

Hello;
This is Shellie in Utah. I teach Grades K-4 Resource, or mild moderate. I've literally poured over your materials and website for the last 24 hours. Fabulous!
I have many questions, but three specifically, to start with if anyone can help me out.
First a little background info to explain my teaching environments and constraints.
In looking at this for pull-out time with small groups, it is not a big stretch to adapt philosophies and procedures. It is the inclusion time that I have questions for. Currently, a specialist team of 3 teachers goes into a grade for 1 hour per day, 3 days a week for what we call Essential Learning. During this hour, students in the grade are grouped according to need, and each teacher in the grade team runs small groups rotations to prep and/or enrich literacy experiences. It is kind of a front=loading program. In the group that requires foundational essential literacy skills, the two resource teachers, the ELL teachers and paras, the reading specialist and paras divide between the two foundational classrooms. Here we pre-teach the concepts to be read about in the general classroom the following week. For example, if the grade will be learning about seeds next week, then we teach vocabulary. read about, and write about those concepts during the week, with a focus on sight words, content words, reading strategies, and writing about reading.
My questions are as follows:
1). Because each specialist and the classroom teacher are preparing their own lesson plans for his/her group, it's really like four mini classes in 1 room. How would you suggest doing this? One teacher teaches rules/procedures to whole class or each teacher teaches the rules in her/his group?

2.) Does anyone have a lesson plan for a small group that you introduce procedures in for a small group rotation? I could really use a jump start.

3.) What if the whole team doesn't buy into this....will it still work with just me, in a twenty minute session, three days a week?

4.) (I lied... I have four questions) There is no homework attached to these groups, so what is a good alternative?


thanks much for any help or suggestions,

Shellie

If you are going to use WBT in a class with other teachers and groups working it may be nice to set up and explain the rules and procedures to the entire class and explain that each group will be using the same techniques, you would then break into your groups and impliment quiet/riot rules that allow students to celebrate (mighty Oh yeah) or (mighty groan) silently. Each teacher should keep a seperate score board game for their group. Since you stated you are mainly front loading the students for a later lesson, I think that spending time teaching vocabulary with gestures and the teach okay would fit into your set up quite nicely. Since there is no homework an incentive for winning the scoreboard game a reward could be a game such as the power teachers soccer game, to review, preview class material. Please let me know if you have any questions. Also make sure you download and study all the free downloads availible on the whole brain teaching.

These are some answers I have for your questions:
1). Because each specialist and the classroom teacher are preparing their own lesson plans for his/her group, it's really like four mini classes in 1 room. How would you suggest doing this? One teacher teaches rules/procedures to whole class or each teacher teaches the rules in her/his group?

When we do our centers the kids earn the points @ the end. Sometimes they earn 4-5 points and @ the end we put the points up as they do the mighty "OH yeah" for every point. They area alwasy excited to see how many points they earned. If your team decides they don't want to do it, I would still use it with your group and have them whisper the mighty oh yeah. I have the kids do it in the hallway and they all whisper it. If you meet with more than one group you could do a competitions between groups and the points earned.

2.) Does anyone have a lesson plan for a small group that you introduce procedures in for a small group rotation? I could really use a jump start.

I do centers daily in the inclusion room and in the resource room. I have a center sheet the kids have to fill out when they complete the center. I attached the form I use in the resource room. I hope it uploaded. I just change the activities as the centers change. When it is time for the students to change centers I play a song. They have to be in their seats by the time the music stops to all earn an point. Music works awesome. If you don't have music you could use any kind of noise. I play the same music every time so they associate the song with changing centers.

3.) What if the whole team doesn't buy into this....will it still work with just me, in a twenty minute session, three days a week?

I would still do it yourself. Your group would rock and the teachers would catch on and most likely want to try it after they see it. I think some teachers are just a little scared to try something new before seeing it in action.

4.) (I lied... I have four questions) There is no homework attached to these groups, so what is a good alternative?

I do extracredit/dextracredit. Every dextracredit takes away an extracredit. I tally the points at the end of the day and add them to the previous day. We work toward a goal. Once we reach our goal I take them outside for 15 minutes.

Hope this helps. Good luck!
Natasha Deet