WBT: Class-Yes (Superhero included)

This is my first post about Whole Brain Teaching, yay!

I’ve been watching my Google reader feed for months now, and have noticed a steady increase in the number of posts dedicated to the various aspects of Whole Brain Teaching. (This may be in part because I keep adding bloggers whose ideas I’ve fallen in love with via Pinterest.)

 It’s been over a year now since I first saw a video of a teacher using this in her classroom, and I wish I had learned about this so much sooner because in my first two years of teaching I taught in a school with major discipline issues, and I’m sure that using this system would have helped make me a more confident and comfortable teacher.

In the past to get my students attention I used the very standard “If you can hear me, raise your hand” or "1 2 3 eyes on me", and I alternated my voice volume and what I wanted my kiddos to do. I had them tap their nose, clap their hands, stamp their feet, wave, bow, etc. But sometimes it got ridiculous, and it took far too many repeats of the question to get the attention of the majority in my classroom, and I got very frustrated. Too often I lost attention of the first few to hear me. I did however, reward my class with high fives for successfully paying attention.

What I think will make Class-Yes a better tool in my future classrooms is that it’s a much shorter command, and it’s a verbal response, so the kiddos who didn’t hear me say “Class”  should be quickly notified by the verbalizations around them instead of the growing silence I used to hope would notify them.

I love how the kiddos still get the fun aspect I was trying to get by changing where they were touching or the action they were performing with the addition of voices (Accents), whispers, and wording (Classity-class-class).

I wish I had a school to use these in when my maternity leave is over in February, but I’ll definitely get to use them! I’m going to try and use as many aspects of WBT as possible in my Sunday School classroom starting this fall. In February if I’m lucky enough to be called as a substitute teacher in my board (where there are way too many subs due to teacher reductions the last several years). If a teacher I’m subbing for forgets to leave a note explaining her management plan, I’ll get the chance to implement Class-Yes, Yay!

To celebrate my newfound love of WBT and my constant sharing of Freebies matching my posts, here are two posters for Class-Yes. One is for use in Sunday School (which is where I hope to use it) or a Christian School, and the other is for my Future classroom where I’m currently obsessing over a Superhero theme. I plan on creating matching posters for each aspect of WBT in both themes as I explore them.

Just click on the one you like to go to it's Google document!

This post is in response to: Class-Yes

Thanks for dropping by!

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