Feedback

        Providing students with feedback regarding their classroom behavior has been such a rewarding experience. I decided to collect data on four different criteria and observe students biweekly.  To collect this data can be a bit time consuming especially when you are also focusing on teaching and utilizing WBT strategies, but then again, as B said in her previous post about feedback,  "there are not shortcuts to being an excellent teacher!"(Thanks Coach Biffle) B and I both provide students with feedback and in collaborating with B and sharing our data we realized that just a few students were “not making smart choice.”   We meet with these students and talk about what this looks like. The Guff counter has been a great way to keep students on track as well!

In the middle of December I provided students with a feedback form that I stapled to a progress report. Students often focus on their assessment scores and final grades that they see on progress reports and report cards, so when they received a progress report with a stapled copy of the percentage of times they raised their hand for permission to speak, followed directions, stayed on task and completed assignments they were surprised and grateful.  I could see the switch go off for many of my students that their grades are not just a number on a quiz but are a reflection of their classroom engagement, participation and behavior.  Below is a copy of the feedback form attached to a progress report. 

K

Guff

We started the Guff counter before Thanksgiving and lets just say we had some serious fun practicing!! There are some kids that really don't have an ounce of Guff in them.


Scoreboard Reward

 At the beginning of the year, we didn't really think we were going to ever need the Guff counter.  Well, as time went by, and students got more comfortable, it became apparent that it would be a useful tool to manage our extra, extra dynamic students.  We have had only a couple of Guff points on the scoreboard, and it didn't take long for students to see what a Guff point could do to the scoreboard at the end of the week; teacher winner, winner...chicken dinner!  By the way, substitute complaints count as Guff.

The Guff counter has also highlighted how invested the kids are in scoreboard.  Since implementing Guff,  when I redirect behavior I can "see" the kids thinking about a response to defend themselves but end up keeping it to themselves.  On the couple of occasions where I have said, "That sounds like Guff to me.  Where is my marker?" and the kids respond with "Please, stop!" the whole room goes so quiet you can hear a pin drop.  It is unbelievable.   Watching it in action also helps to support the timing of implementation.  Like Whole Brain says, it increases the challenge of scoreboard and wouldn't work if used too early in the year.  The kids are doing a great job earning their reward and know our routines are not just for show.  We mean business.  Their respect for our classroom rules and routines has been outstanding.  We are so proud of them.

Also, we had our first student reach Leader on the Super Improvers board. The kids were so impressed by this student because it isn't someone they would expect, but they knew she had earned it.  All students are still counting their stars when they come into class and are motivated by the collection of stars of their peers. Falling too far behind their peers also puts a little fire under them as well.  In the new year, we are going to establish new goals for the 2nd of half of term 2 and term 3.  I wonder what they will be working on during our final term?  We are convinced that Living Legends will emerge!!

Structure and Function of Cells

Yesterday, we started our unit on cells.  The essential question for the unit is, How does the structure and function of cells make life possible?  Today was our second day of instruction.  We used lots of whole brain strategies to set the stage for the daily task.  Watching the video, I am psyched about the level of student engagement.  I recognize a couple of places I could have included a switch and scoreboard.  I'll have to make up for that tomorrow!  Sometimes the students are so on task and performing better than I hope, I overlook opportunities to reward them.

Literature Circles and WBT

My students and I are embarking on a new journey into Literature Circles. This is the first time this year that students will be working collaboratively through a student facilitated discussion. In preparation for the lesson I thought about how WBT could be incorporated into the lesson to ensure everything is clear and runs smoothly. I decided to developed gestures to go along with the five Literature Circle roles that are introduced at the beginning of the lesson. 

The follow is a list of the five roles:

The discussion leader is in charge of facilitating the discussion and creating higher order thinking questions.

The summarizer retells the important parts and turns a few chapters into a concise paragraph.

The wordsmith looks for several words in the text that are new and interesting. They also put the word and definition on the word wall.

The journalist sketches a picture of the scene with a description.

The line lighter copies down evidence of great writing or important quote within the text.

Below is a video of my class learning the roles with gestures for the first time. Students are using my favorite strategy, mirror, to enhance their understanding.

If you are interested in worksheets for each role just comment below and I’ll post them! K

Super Improvers Student Feedback

Providing Super Improvers  Feedback

 

As part of my professional learning goal, I am tracking student behaviors every two weeks.  I finished the first round last week and calculated the percentage of time each student was meeting the targeted behaviors.  These targeted behaviors include following directions quickly, raising hand for permission to speak, staying on task, handing in neat work and applying practiced skills independently.  Each student has a card with these behaviors listed on the front.  I used these “Super Improver” Cards to provide students with feedback regarding their successes with these classroom behaviors.  When I pass out the cards, students find their percentage of success on the back.  When students received this feedback, their behaviors improved significantly.  For example, this week all of my challenging students increased their level to Fence sitter or Go-Along (I don’t have the data in front of me to quantify this but will add later).  The Alpha's maintained their performance, and only 1 student dropped from a Go-Along to a Fence Sitter. 

 

Providing the feedback also helped to eliminate the need of having to talk with all 100 students.  This week I am focusing on touching base with the student who dropped a behavior level and those students who increased their performance by two levels.  I want to talk to them to recognize their hard work.  All students who showed improvement and maintained Alpha status earned a sticker on their star.

 

After the feedback, we had many students move from Rookie to Phenom on the Super Improvers Wall. It was great to see how proud they were of themselves.  The other students also became more invested in how many stickers they had collected and how many more they needed. 

 

Admittedly, this is a bit time consuming but was well worth the effort and made a great case for the words written in Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids, “there are no shortcuts to being an excellent teacher”.  More importantly, the students are invested in their success.  This is huge!!

SMART Goals

Our professional goal for this school year has been approved and reads as follows:

Implement Whole Brain Teaching  classroom management strategies to move students up, on average, one level in classroom behavior as evidenced by tracking sheets that highlight the frequency in which  students meets 5 established criteria (raises hand for permission to speak, follows directions quickly, stays on task, turns in neat work, applies practiced skills independently).

 

 

My student learning goal is:

 

Students will learn to use gestures to recall and teach the meaning of symbols, key terms, and other domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a specific scientific or technical context relevant to grade 7 texts and topics

 

 

Now we are working on our educator plans.  It is our excitement to have measurable results with the implementation of WBT that has made this exhausting process bearable.  I hope other teachers have as worthwhile endeavors to get them through it as well.

B

Joyful One: New "Class-Yes"

Looking through Whole Brain Teaching pins at Pinterest, I found this great post.  There are so many ways to keep Class? Yes! fresh all year.


Joyful One: New "Class-Yes": "Class-Yes" can be heard across our campus each day. It is our Attention Getter in WBT, and it is extremely effective. This week, ...

Is Mirror a game?

In an earlier post B blogged about S.M.A.R.T goals and whole brain. I too have a WBT S.M.A.R.T goal and just received feedback from my first observation.  

In our district observations are unannounced and have to be a minimum of 10 minutes. The observer sits in the classroom with their IPAD and observes. On that day I just happened to be reviewing vocabulary using whole brain techniques of mirror and teach, okay! My students did phenomenal and I only had to redirect one challenging student! 

I received my feedback which consist of mostly checklists with a few boxes for comments. I was surprised to see the academic game box checked which referred to the mirroring and gestures. I want "funtricity" in my classroom but I had never considered Mirror to be a game. What's your thoughts on that? I would LOVE some feedback. 

K

Power Pix

Many teachers, including K, make power points with pictures and definitions to teach core vocabulary.  I have always had a space for my science vocabulary words and lots of clues to help remember their definitions, but nothing as effective as a prepared visual display.  This was the first time taking it a step further by making Power Pix.   I know this is a good strategy for visual and ELL learners, but it was also a great process for me.  The Power Pix have helped me to choose specific language to prepare for my lesson delivery and has taken my already organized unit/lesson up a notch.  I'm anxious to see how the students respond.  You can find my first set of power pix here.
http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/27175980"
Hope they are helpful. 
B
If you see any errors, let me know.

K and I are both teachers in Massachusetts, so we are working on establishing goals for this school year.  We wanted to incorporate the WB strategies into our goals and collect measureable data regarding our success with implementation.  We are hoping that by year's end our data will support our feelings and back up our belief in the WB learning system.

Using Chapter 4 of Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids, we developed a S.M.A.R.T. goal that reads:

By June 2014, every student in my class will move up, on average, one level in classroom behavior  as evidenced by tracking sheets that highlight the frequency in which each student meets 5 established criteria.

Each of us has slightly different criteria, and we are waiting for approval, so we'll let you know. 

K&B

Super Improving your Alphas, Go Alongs, Fence Sitters, and Challenging Students

 

This weekend I wrote a reflection for Chapter 4 of Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging kids for WBT certification.  This chapter, called Charting Progress, discusses charting our own behavior as well as student’s behavior.  Initially, I knew I would chart my own behavior because I can be pretty sarcastic and stern.  However, I was not convinced I would use the system described in the book for charting student behavior.

 

I happen to be thinking about K’s post about the Super Improvers Wall and the work she did setting up goals with her students.  K’s initiative to make the Super Improvers Wall more authentic for her students inspired me to see the value of charting student behavior described in chapter 4.

 

Like K, I will set up goals with my students. These goals will be based on 5 measurable behaviors (follows directions quickly, raises hand for permission to speak, stays on task, hands in neat work and applies practiced skills independently).  I will also divide my students into the same groups discussed in the book based on the frequency in which each student demonstrates these measurable behaviors.  I’m going to use the same rating system and hopefully, this will indeed move each student up 1 group by years end.

 

But those are just the logistics.  The truth is both K and I, with the guidance of WBT, are setting up goals that go beyond academic ability.  As long as we keep our students motivated and provide them with consistent feedback, our kids will also experience personal growth and pride.  Moreover, this process will help to build both character and resilience; two very important traits of lifelong learners.

Super Improvers!!

 

                The Super Improver Wall has been a great way to individually acknowledge students for their personal gains in the classroom.  Now that the first month of school has passed and I have learned so much about each student.  I decided to step up the expectations for the Super Improver Wall a bit and hold students more accountable for a personal goal.   I met with each student for a minute or two and we discussed what they needed to work on in ELA. I took charge of the conversation and guided them in this decision. The goals ranged from completion of all assignments to more participation during class discussions.  Each student had a goal on a white index card and I required students to keep the index card on their desk as a friendly reminder during class.

                Wow! The small index card with their goal made such a difference in class discussions. Students remained on task, participating effectively and MADE SMART CHOICES! Every single student in my second period class received a star on the Super Improver Wall for their great work! Reflecting on this experience I think next time I will have students come up with their goal rather than me guiding them.  Below is a picture of how Super Improver Wall looks like in a middle school classroom. I divided it by classes at the bottom so I could better manage students' stars.

K

Mirror and Teach! Ok!

The kids and I love using Mirror and Teach! Ok!  Below is a sample video of us at work.  The video is a very powerful tool for me as well.  You'll notice that at one point I'm on the side of the room away from the video camera and don't notice the uncertainty coming from the students directly in front of the video.  After I watched the video, I knew I needed to watch these students more closely the next day.  Though they were participating, they had little control over the information.  It ended up that I was able to work with these two students more closely and increase their motivation and control of the concept being introduced. B

To Gesture or Not to Gesture?

I'm preparing to teach my 7th grade students classification.  We usually use a mnemonic device to remember the levels of classification, and I wondered if I would still use gestures for this information.  I came across this great WB video posted below and my question was answered.  Of course I would still use gestures!

 I will be sure to post my students using Mirror and Teach-Ok after our work.  Unfortunately, it will be a few weeks.  My students are in engineering for the next 3 weeks and there in no WB learning taking place there.  Today, I actually cried because I miss my students and our WB learning. 

Anyway, check out the cool math video below. B

Class? Yes!

K and I are so excited to finally have set up a blog to share our experiences with Whole Brain Teaching.  We have spent so much time talking about what it would look like in our classrooms and now we have space to share our experiences with others.

During the first few weeks of school we have had so many positive experiences ranging from setting up our classroom to actually completing  entire lesson plans in the amount of time expected.  K has some pictures to show off how our rooms are set up with WBT strategies (our rooms look almost identical).

We both agree that Class? Yes! is an incredible and unbelievable effective strategy.  In fact, I have been the one wasting time getting over my shock that every student has stopped talking and is looking at me waiting for instruction.  There is no more waiting for students to finish their conversations with each other or asking (begging) please, listen.  We say class.  They say yes.  However we say class is how they say yes.  Perfectly FUN!!  Start using this tomorrow.  You won't believe how much more is accomplished in just one class period.  The more you use Class? Yes!  the sillier you will get, and the smiles you exchange with your students will get bigger and bigger each day!