Goodies
Goodies (14)
1999: In the small Southern California town of Yucaipa, three instructors, Chris Biffle (college), Jay Vanderfin (kindergarten) and Chris Rekstad (4th grade) spend a year designing a radical new teaching system based on three principles: the system should be brain based, fun and free.
2000: Thirty Yucaipa teachers meet in Biffle’s living room. The educators are uncertain which aspect of the new system they love the most ... the cost (zip) or the potent chunks of educational tomfoolery.
2001-2006: Biffle, Vanderfin and Rekstad host monthly free Power Teachers conferences on classroom management, reading and state standards at Crafton HIlls College in Yucaipa. Seminar attendance ranges from 20-40. The three heroes ask themselves, “What’s the Golden Key? How can we reach way more teachers and spread, across the land, the music of task focused laughter?”
2007: The Golden Key is discovered. Focus on teaching challenging students! A core seminar is designed, “Teaching Challenging K-12 Students (and the rest of your class, too!)” Desperate, fun loving teachers pour out of the woodwork. Seminar attendance skyrockets from 40 to 400+.
2008: The not-exactly-technologically-hip trio discovers YouTube and TeacherTube. In 14 months, Power Teachers videos receive 500,000 views. Teachers in every state of the Union and 20 foreign countries study Power Teacher's short movies. Thousands of pages of free Power Teachers materials are downloaded from a collection of sites. By the end of the year, with the wondrous assistance of programmer Jason Pedersen, a single website, this one!, is designed. All of Power Teaching's resources, videos, testimonials, message boards, calendar, free downloads are available under one electronic roof.
2009: Biffle, Vanderfin and Rekstad, ask themselves ... What's our next goal? The answer: to become one of America's leaders in brain based education. And so, in the summer of '09, Power Teaching becomes Whole Brain Teaching, LLC, a limited liability corporation. New name. New vision. Same great prices!
2010: WBT conferences continue to set attendance records. In the small town of Hemet, California, over 900 teachers register for a presentation in an auditorium that seats 400! In April, WBT reaches out to an international audience with webcasts featuring lively, and live!, introductions to a host of brain friendly teaching strategies. In August, views of WBT videos on YouTube and TeacherTube top 1,000,000.
Power Teaching is now Whole Brain Teaching, LLC!
|
All of Whole Brain Teaching’s instructional techniques (see the “First Steps” menu) are validated by contemporary brain research.
Class-Yes: Our primary attention-getter activates the prefrontal cortex, often called the CEO of the brain. The prefrontal cortex controls, among other functions, decision making, planning and focus of attention. Little if any learning can take place if the prefrontal cortex is not engaged. We think of the Class-Yes as a brain switch that readies students for instruction.
The Scoreboard: The limbic system, deep inside the brain, is the source of our emotions. When an instructor marks a Smiley or a Frowny on the Scoreboard, students feel a small, positive or negative, emotional jolt. By enlivening the marking routine with a “mighty oh yeah” or a “mighty groan” the reward circuitry in the limbic system is activated.
Teach-Okay: Brain and learning research indicates that students learn the most when they are engaged in teaching each other. By emphasizing energetic, instructional gesturing, we engage, during teach-okay sessions, five of students' most powerful brain areas: visual cortex (seeing gestures), motor cortex (making gestures), Broca’s area (verbalizing a lesson), Wernicke’s area (hearing a lesson), and the limbic system, (giving emotional content to a lesson.)
Hands and Eyes: When we are making an important point, we want students to focus intensely on what we are saying. In the hands of a practiced WBT instructor, Hands and Eyes creates instant silence, eliminating all learning distractions; the prefrontal cortex takes control of brain activity focusing the visual cortex and the auditory cortex on the lesson at hand.
Switch: Some students talk easily, often too easily! Other students fall into the role of passive listeners. In terms of brain structure, classes are often divided between those who are Brocaians (speakers) and Wernikites (listeners). By using Switch, an instructor can easily teach listening skills to the speakers and speaking skills to the listeners.
Mirror: Many brain scientists believe that we learn by mirroring the gestures and activities of others. They have identified mirror neurons scattered throughout the brain that are activated by mimicking the behavior we observe. Our own experience in WBT classroom indicates that when a class mirrors our gestures and, when appropriate, repeats our words, a powerful learning bond is created between students and teachers.
All of WBT’s instructional strategies have been rigorously classroom tested, many for over 10 years. Based on feedback that we receive at conferences, on our website and via emails from hundreds of teachers across the country, we are constantly refining our techniques.
Our initial, and primary, research goal was to create a system that instructors would willingly adopt. We believe there is a direct correlation between the effectiveness of a classroom management system and an instructor's enthusiastic implementation of the system. Over the last five years, we have asked instructors at the end of our seminars to answer one question:
Compared to other teaching systems that you are familiar with, Whole Brain Teaching is:
a. much better
b. better
c. about the same
d. worse
e. much worse
In one of the largest surveys of its kind, we have polled over 2,000 K-12 educators in California, Arizona, Texas, Montana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama. The results have been astounding. Seventy percent of instructors rated our system “much better” and 28% rated it “better.” The results are close to unanimous; 98% of educators believe WBT is superior to every other teaching system. We believe no other instructional strategy can match these numbers.
Our research continues. In poverty level schools in San Jacinto, California in a district that is 98% free and reduced lunch and 80% Hispanic, students' reading scores in WBT classrooms showed a 12% increase, in three months, over students in non-WBT settings. At San Jacinto Elementary, a team of fourth grade teachers achieved significant results using Whole Brain Teaching with over 120 students. As compared with the previous year, math scores on state tests advanced a remarkable 28%.
Individual WBT instructors across the country report their state test scores exceed those of traditional teachers by 20-30%. Three schools in Hemet, California who have adopted WBT have seen decreases in office referrals and suspensions by as much as 50% in a two year period.
In an intriguing new study from Detroit, Michigan, "Integrating Whole Brain Teaching Strategies to Create a More Engaged Learning Environment," Jesame Torres Palasigue evaluated 9 types of student negative behaviors. The behaviors included head on hand or desk, complaining, staring into space, engaging in off task activities, being out of the proper seat. Palasigue measured the frequency of these behaviors with fifth graders before and after the students were introduced to Whole Brain Teaching. Palasigue reports, "Overall, there was a 50% decrease in student negative behaviors from the pre-observation to the post-observation. The frequency of the nine listed behaviors during the pre-observation markedly decreased in the post-observation." Palasigue's study is published online in Education Resources Information Center, the world's largest digital library of education literature.
Linda Mikels, a strong supporter of WBT and principal of 6th Street Prep in Victorville, one of the top ranked elementary schools in California, reports a remarkable increase in API ratings. Scores soared from 632 in 2002 to 938 in 2009. Mikels attributes a substantial portion of her school's success to her staff's implementation of Whole Brain Teaching.
Despite these successes, we are most proud of the remarkable teacher support we have received since 1999. As of February 2010, over 18,000 teachers have registered on our web site, WholeBrainTeaching.com and have downloaded over 10 million pages of our free ebooks. Our videos on YouTube and TeacherTube average 1,000+ views per day and total over 1,000,000 views.
If you want to inform parents about Whole Brain Teaching, here is a sample letter you can send home with your students.
Dear Parents,
As the year progresses, you may notice that our classroom doesn’t run like other classrooms. We will be learning through Whole Brain Teaching, a research based system that utilizes all areas of the brain, keeps children engaged throughout their lessons, and helps them retain much more information than the standard lecture-discussion model.
Whole Brain Teaching is a highly interactive form of instruction that delivers information to students in short “chunks.” Kids then teach what they have just learned to their partners, using hand-gestures to help remember specific vocabulary. While students teach each other, the teacher walks around the room to discover who understands the lesson and who needs more instruction.
Research shows that children retain more information when they have an opportunity to put it into their own words and use gestures to emphasize key instructional units …plus, it’s amazingly fun! For more information about Whole Brain Teaching please contact me, come by for a classroom visit and/or go to www.WholeBrainTeaching.com.
Thanks!
(signed … with contact information)
So, you dream of being a Whole Brain Trainer? We’ve supplied a free ebook, “The Whole Brain Teachers Training Manual” to make your dreams come true!
You’ll receive step by step scripts to guide eager teachers through the Big Seven:
- Class-Yes
- Five Classroom Rules
- The Scoreboard
- Teach-Okay
- Hands and Eyes
- Mirror
- Switch!
As long as you don’t charge anything for your services or our materials, practice as a trainer with groups of your colleagues.
Be sure to direct your audience to this website, wholebrainteaching.com. Three menus above provide an excellent overview of our entire system.
- First Steps (the Big Seven)
- Levels (the Six Scoreboard Levels)
- Goodies (all our reading, math, state standards materials)
When you think you’re ready for the big time and want to travel with Whole Brain Teaching pros across the country, contact Chris Biffle. He’ll be delighted to hear from you, especially if you’ve been posting lots of notes on the forum at this site about your experiences and insights.
“Mind Soccer,” inspired by Fred Jones’ reward system, is Whole Brain Teaching’s hilarious review anything game. The contest, typically between boys and girls, can be adapted to any age group, any subject, any length of time. “Mind Soccer” is the highly motivating reward we suggest for use with the Scoreboard. Imagine kids working as hard as they can all day, even all week, for the privilege of reviewing course material!
Click on “Videos” above, to see Chris Rekstad’s video showing his 4th grade class playing “Mind Soccer.” Download the ebook, by clicking on “Free Downloads.”
Our Power Pix will vastly simplify teaching state standards. Each standard is accompanied by a picture, a gesture, a definition and a set of simple tests. Currently, “Kindergarten Power Pix” is available as a free download.
“Kindergarten Power Pix” present individual pictures, gestures, definitions and teaching suggestions for 35 language arts concepts and 38 math concepts commonly taught in kindergarten. The Power Pix are ideally suited to give whole brain instruction (seeing, saying, hearing, doing) to new learners in state standards. The concepts are:
Language Arts
author, black, blue, capital letter, characters, colors, end mark, exclamation mark, fiction, front cover, gray, green, illustrator, letters, lowercase alphabet, nonfiction, orange, period, purple, question mark, red, rhyming words, sentence, setting, sorting, spaces, syllables, table of contents, title, title page, uppercase alphabet, vowels, yellow, white, word
Math
counting 1 to 5, counting 1 to 10, addition, big hand on a clock, calendar, circle, clock, cone, cube, cylinder, equal numbers, equals sign, estimate, evening, Friday, less than , little hand on a clock, minus sign, Monday, more than, morning, noon, plus sign, pointer counting, rectangle, Saturday, sorting, sphere, square, subtraction, Sunday, Thursday, today, tomorrow, triangle, Tuesday, Wednesday, yesterday
Click on “Free Downloads” above ... and be patient when downloading “Kindergarten Power Pix.” It’s a massive program!
- free
- education
- teachers
- math
- whole brain teaching
- students
- instructor
- chris biffle
- power teaching
- middle school
- high school
- elementary school
- teaching challenging kids
- classroom management
- teaching techniques
- student engagement
- challenging students
- free downloads
- state standards
- free visual aids
- language art
Here are some simple ways to turn six of the most common classroom procedures into entertaining, highly efficient routines.
- Lining Up: When you want your students to line up, say, “lines!” They say, “lines, lines, lines,” and clapping and cheering, they line up. You “time” them by counting out a rhythmic cadence, (1, 2, 3, 4, ...) When your class is in line, they put their hands up (or, if you wish, behind their back). If they have lined up quickly, and/or broken a class time record for lining up, the class earns a positive mark on the Scoreboard.
- Sitting Down: Follow a similar procedure for sitting down. You say “seats!” Your students say “seats, seats, seats” and clapping and cheering, they sit down. You “time” them with a rhythmic count. When your class is seated, it’s hands up, or folded, as you wish. Sitting down quickly, or breaking their class record for sitting down, earns them a positive mark on the Scoreboard.
- Opening Books: If you want your class to open to page 34 of their science book, you say, “34, science book.” Your class says “34, science book” three times. Follow the same timing and reward procedure as above.
- Handing in Papers: You say, “papers in!” Your class says “Papers in!” three times. Everyone cheers and claps. The papers are handed in to one person who stacks them neatly on your table. Follow the same timing and reward procedure as above.
- Handing Out Papers: You say, “papers out!” and your students say “papers out!” three times. You give a student a stack of papers. That student splits the stack to two other students, who split the stack to other students and so forth. No one leaves their seat (yet). If a student has extra papers, she slowly waggles the papers over her head. If a student doesn’t have a paper, he goes quickly to get one from the paper waggler. All extra papers are handed back in to one student who puts them in a neat stack on your desk. Students cheer and clap, encouraging each other. Follow the same timing and reward procedure as above.
If the cheering and clapping is too much for you, or neighboring teachers, have students do a “quiet riot” by whisper cheering and patting one finger against another.
Great Hint: Practice these procedures several times a day, when you aren’t actually involved in lining up, sitting down, opening books, or distributing papers. - Sharpening pencils: Pencil sharpeners are wonderful machines for creating chaos in the classroom. Students distract each other on the way to the pencil sharpener, at the pencil sharpener and on the way back. Here is a simple solution
- Buy an electric pencil sharpener; put 100 sharpened pencils in a coffee can.
- Put a red sheet of paper on one side of the can, a green sheet of paper on the other side.
- When the green side faces the class, any student can get up, trade their pencil with a sharpened pencil and sit down. When the red side faces the class, no one can leave their seat to trade a pencil. If students don’t have a pencil to trade, they can get a sharpened pencil anyway.
A WBT classroom is a constantly rewarding, no failure environment. Rewards without threats of failure are good for brains!
When Tina does something well, anything, answers a question, turns in great work, lines up with wonderful speed, say, “Give Tina a 10 finger woo!” Students point their fingers at Tina and say, “Woo!” When Marcus does something even grander, give him a 10 finger rolling woo. Students wiggle 10 fingers at him and roll their hands at the same time, saying “woo!” Other group recognitions of outstanding individual behavior can be invented.
When Timmy doesn’t know the answer to a question, or answers incorrectly, quickly say, “Tell Timmy ‘it’s cool!” Your class says, “it’s cool!” Tim isn’t embarrassed; you quickly supply the right answer. Perhaps best of all, when you make a mistake, your class will give you a merry, and forgiving, “it’s cool!”
In a gamelike format, your kids learn to paraphrase, translate ideas into gestures, skim read for key ideas, connect their reading to personal experiences, and much more!
For a lively introduction to the wonders of the Crazy Professor, see Chris Rekstad’s video under “Videos” above; then download the ebook by clicking on “Free Downloads.”
Typically, kindergartners learn 20 to 25 sight words during the year. Biffytoons, using full color cartoons that illustrate each sight word with a gesture, make it possible for new readers to learn 48 sight words ... while they’re having a blast!
Put the Biffytoons cartoon on your word wall; teach your class the gesture pictured on the cartoon; when everyone has mastered the word and gesture, replace the cartoon with the word itself. This is whole brain learning at its finest. Children are involved in lessons that involve seeing, saying, hearing and doing (making gestures).
As a special bonus, “Biffytoons” contains 48 mini-cartoons so students can take the entire sight word program home to study with their parents or older siblings.
Biffytoons words are arranged in three sets (though they can be taught in any order).
Set 1: the, to, and, he, a, I, you, it, of, in, was, said, his, that, she, for, on Set 2: they, but, had, at, him, with, up, see, all, look, is, her, there, some, word, out Set 3: as, be, each, have, g, we, am, then, little, down, do, can, could, when, did, what
To examine the free ebook, click on the “Free Downloads” menu above.