Whole Brain Teaching

Have you ever been teaching your kids and noticed the few students who weren't involved in any whole group activity? As teachers we can always identify the students that lack concentration and interest during whole group time. We also tend to struggle and fight against that student trying to make them get involved and actively participate when they would rather be counting dust particles on the floor. Whole group activities can tend to be very challenging and frustrating because it is nearly impossible to reach every single one of your students every whole group lesson while making sure it is fun and engaging and meeting all of their personal learning styles. Wow! That's an incredible mountain to climb just for one lesson!
When I began teaching I started researching every classroom management strategy that I could find. About a month before school began in August I came across a strategy called Whole Brain Teaching. I spent about three hours on the website researching all of their different methods and immediately fell in love with everything they were saying.

Whole Brain Teaching was created as a response to the challenge of actively involving all students and engaging all parts of the brain during the entire day. There are seven easy steps to use when you are beginning WBT. You can either choose to integrate all seven steps or pick the ones you like most and try using those first!

In my classroom I have taught my students "Class-Yes", "5 classroom rules", "Hands and eyes" and I use the scoreboard.

Class-Yes

This is my favorite strategy from WBT. Class-Yes is used as an attention getting strategy. The teacher says "Class" and the students respond with "Yes" then focus their attention on the teacher and wait for directions. What I love the most about this attention getter is that you decide how to say "Class" and the students have to copy it exactly with "Yes". My kindergarten students love hearing all the different ways I have said "Class" and they love having to copy it exactly. It's also a very quick way to get everyones attention and even my kinders caught on easily after a week of practicing.

5 Classroom Rules

As with any management system you always need to have classroom rules for the students to follow. The creators of WBT believe that all procedures and expectations can be covered through 5 basic rules. They have created motions that go along with each rule and recommend that students recite the rules in the morning and afternoon or after a long break from your regular routine. I changed their 5 rules to fit the needs of my students as well as my teaching style and developed my own motions to go along with the rules. In the beginning of the year we recite our rules in the morning and after outside time. As we get further into the year we only recite the rules in the morning or if we are struggling to regain focus after being out of our daily routine. I love the chant with the classroom rules. It's especially helpful if students are consistently not following rules all you have to do is hold up your fingers say rule number 4 and have them recite the rule. This is a quick and easy way to refresh their memory and have them check their self to make sure they are following that particular rule.

Hand and Eyes

This is another one of my favorite strategies. This is used after Class-Yes to get students focus on the teacher. It can also be used anytime during whole group activities to regain focus on something important. This strategy is extremely simple but very powerful. The teacher simply says hands and eyes and the students are taught to put their hands in their laps and their eyes on the teacher. It sounds simple right...but it actively engages more parts of the brain so students are ready to hear what you are about to say.

Scoreboard

I recently started using the scoreboard technique during our whole group activity time. My class this year is extremely active and so far the scoreboard is the only technique that has helped calm their behavior during whole group. There are many different levels and games that you can play with the scoreboard which makes it very fun and new for the students. My students love walking in on Monday and seeing a new version of the scoreboard above our calendar as we move through the different levels. They also love when they are able to beat me on Fridays. Any competition against the teacher seems to work wonders for students attention!

Whole Brain Teaching is a very easy and engaging management system that anyone can implement in their classroom with just a few simple steps. Even if you just try one of the seven steps you will be amazed at how focused your students become and how they participate more often during whole group activities. My classroom is still a work in progress. I'm working towards using all of the whole brain teaching strategies and I'm extremely excited to see how it affects my students learning!

A Says What?

Almost from the second Kindergarten students walk through your door you begin working with the alphabet. Learning to name letters and the sounds that go with the letters is one of the biggest foundational skills learned in Kindergarten. I was fortunate enough my first year of teaching to have an amazing mentor that taught me a lot of tricks to use when teaching students the alphabet. Generally we begin singing the traditional alphabet song and learn to point at each of the letters as we sing them (I'm a huge fan of songs so there will be a ton of them on here!). After they have learned the alphabet song we transition to a variety of different alphabet songs.


One of my favorite song writers is Jack Hartmann. He has some amazing songs for everything you can imagine. Here are some of his alphabet songs:

• Hip-Hop to the Alphabet
• Letter Sounds Yo Yo
• These are the Vowels (Great to use about half way through the year)
• Workout to the Letter Sounds (my kids beg me to play this song)
• Move to the Alphabet (helps students recognize the formation of letters)

Another song writer that I love is Dr. Jean. She has great songs for everyday things as well as songs to use while teaching. Here are some of her alphabet songs:

• Who Let the Letters Out
• Alphardy
• Phon-ercise
• Sing and Sign

I use Who Let the Letters Out to help my students learn the sounds that each letter makes. Along with saying the sounds we use sign language and different motions to describe the sounds that the letters make. In the beginning of the school year we do this song everyday as we introduce new letters and sounds. It sounds weird but I've found that sign language and motions put together really help the students learn the sounds a lot faster than simply singing them or saying them.

Along with singing I also do activities designed to help the students become more fluent with letter recognition and sound recognition. Most of my activities were found on the Florida Center for Reading Research website. FCRR has amazing activities designed for all grade levels and the best part is you have to do very little work to get these activities up and running for your students! They are perfect for busy teachers who need things ready to go. Here are some activities I have used the past couple of years in my room:

Alphabet Borders

Students have to match the letters of the alphabet and use the pictures to help them identify the sounds.

Alphabet Arc

Students use foam letters to match the print letters in the arc. There is another version for higher students where letters are missing around the arc.

Clip-A-Letter (One of my students favorites!)

Students get a wheel with upper case or lower case letters on it and they have to find the clothespin with the same letter to clip onto the spot. For students who can successfully match letters, they can use the initial sound wheel and match the initial sounds the same way.

Poetry Pen

Students use familiar nursery rhymes to find letters at the beginning of words. This activity is great because you can also use it when students start learning more high frequency words. Students can use the nursery rhymes to find familiar high frequency words.

Sound Snacker

I purchased little trashcans from the Dollar Tree (a teachers best friend) and used those as my sound monsters. Students identify the sound on each of the trashcans then look at pictures or objects and decide which monster will eat it according to the beginning sound.

I was also fortunate to get an amazing activity through Donor's Choose from LakeShore. I wrote a proposal for different phonics activities and ended up getting if funded! Through my proposal I received Alphabet Teaching Tubs. I use these almost everyday in the beginning of the year as I introduce new letters and sounds. Each tub has a set of objects in it that begin with that sound. My students love guessing what letter it is by naming all of the objects and discovering what each object begins with. They make teaching sounds extremely interactive and builds vocabulary too!

As you can see teaching letters and sounds is a huge skill that is usually ongoing throughout the whole year. There are a ton of ways to get your students interested in learning letters and sounds by simply creating songs or by giving them fun and engaging activities to do.

1, 2, 3...Count with me!

We all know Kindergarten is full of math objectives but one of the most important is counting and identifying numbers. With the new Common Core Standards we will see a huge increase in the rigor that students will face while learning to count and identify numbers.

I have found that allowing Kinders to count anything and everything that interests them is the best way to help them develop their counting skills. Here is a list of things to count within the classroom:

• Crayons
• Chairs
• Girls vs Boys
• Students present vs Students absent (starts to help develop the concept of addition)
• Tables
• Markers
• Stuffed Animals
• Books

Kinders love counting anything they can touch! If you count objects enough, they develop 1-1 correspondence really quickly.

After developing their growing counting skills, we move onto identifying numbers and counting objects to match the number. Here are some great activities I use:

Counting Tubs with ideas borrowed from Hubbard's Cupboard

Spot has lost his spots!

Students identify the number on Spot and count out that many beans to add spots to the dog.








You can also print out different pictures to mix it up a little. We have shirts to put buttons on, pigs to put coins in and lady bugs to put legs on.

I recently started using the game Where's the Worm to help students identify different numbers. Students guess numbers on apples trying to find where the worm is hiding. The kids love it when they can actually find the worm!

It's also really easy to create file folder games where students have to count dots and find the matching number.

If you want some great games to use with counting and numbers check out LakeShore Learning. They have some great games and different manipulatives that make teaching easy!

Also, if you are teaching at a Title 1 school like me, check out Donors Choose. All you have to do is type up a project, post it and keep your fingers crossed that it gets funded.

Counting in Kindergarten can be really fun and engaging when the students feel like they are playing a game instead of having to work. It's really easy to find great, engaging activities that will work for all students. Check out Pinterest for some more really good ideas!