On Saturday I attended an EduCon conversation about the students in our classes who may be introverted and how we can best address their needs in our classrooms. Ever since then, I have been trying to brainstorm some ideas on how I may use whole brain teaching strategies and have them be a positive experience for these students. Tony Baldasaro mentioned a few times throughout the conversation that students who are introverted need time to think and reflect silently on a subject before sharing their ideas with others. He used the example that a student who is… Read More
My Thoughts on Educon 2.4
Well Sunday is finally here and amidst finishing homework, my parents coming into town to visit and attending a wedding fashion show I am happy to say I was able to attend BOTH of the EduCon conversations that I mentioned on Friday! The entire experience was a little overwhelming but very exciting for me. I had decided that I would try to figure out the online streaming access a few hours prior to the sessions I wanted to attend, and good thing! It seemed to take me FOREVER to actually be able to view the online conversation streams (remember,… Read More
Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday! Class-Yes
One week has come and gone and I’m excited to be writing my second Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday post! I hope that this focus on a specific WBT strategy is helpful to those of you who are wishing to learn more about how a certain strategy may work and what my personal experience with it has been. Last week I highlighted “Teach-Ok”, this week I would like to introduce you to the WBT strategy of “Class-Yes”. (I realize that my introduction of these strategies are not in any specific order). “Class-Yes” is a classroom management strategy that allows… Read More
WBT & Differentiated Instruction
Dr. Carol Tomlinson Today in class we viewed a video on Differentiated Instruction by Carol Tomlinson, (view her website here). We talk about Differentiated Instruction in every single one of our education classes. If you are not familiar with this topic, it centers on the idea that every classroom is going to have students that represent a broad spectrum of learners and, as teachers, we must plan for these differences. We need to keep in mind that our students are going to be coming into our classrooms with different ability levels, different learning styles, different backgrounds, etc and we need… Read More
And the Results Are In!
I haven’t posted in a few days as I was at a resort and spa for the weekend celebrating my fiance’s birthday with my in-laws-to-be! It was a wonderful holiday but I’m now back to the world of laundry, homework and a staggering 30+ emails to catch up with. I am happy to report that our first Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday was a fabulous success with several hundred people checking out the post! The WBT website has so many amazing strategies and resources that I will be able to highlight different ones on Wednesdays for quite some time. Thank… Read More
Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday! Teach-Ok
Today is our first Whole Brain Teaching Wednesday, a special post dedicated to highlighting a specific WBT strategy in more detail than I do during some of my regular posts where I discuss my education classes as well. To kick it off our first WBT-W I would like to start with “Teach-Ok”. “Teach-Ok” is a formative assessment tool that allows for you, as the teacher, to gauge student’s comprehension on the topics you’re teaching. This strategy, however, is not your average worksheet that bores your students, requires hours of marking and kills trees! Studies have shown that when the… Read More
Hello….. Is Anyone There?
Well its official, I can’t resist Google and have moved my blog over to Blogger as opposed to Weebly. Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Weebly. It was very “mickey mouse” and for someone that is not very tech-savvy it worked perfectly for me. I decided, however, that with Blogger I would be able to reach more people and make this blog even better for you! One thing that I’ve mentioned before is that since I’ve discovered whole brain teaching I have found the WBT community incredibly supportive. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to network with… Read More
You Can Start Using WBT by Monday!
Friday is finally here and Friday the 13th at that. I won’t sugarcoat it, we know that Fridays can sometimes come with some management concerns. Your students are ready for the weekend and that means that it can be easier for them to get off-task and sometimes this can snowball into even larger issues. When I was student teaching, Fridays also meant assemblies, sports tournaments, hockey games, etc and sometimes it could be so challenging to keep everyone on task and focused in the classroom! With this in mind, I want to share with you a great new resource from… Read More
Welcome to Grade…. 5??
Today I heard back from my cooperating teacher who will be having me in his classroom this upcoming March for eight weeks (I had sent him an email introducing myself last week.) He seemed very enthusiastic and supportive, from what I could tell from his email! The big surprise to me, however, was that he taught Grade 5! As some of you know, I am in the senior years stream and my last student teaching placement was with Grades 10, 11, and 12. I’ll admit, at the start I was pretty apprehensive. My mind was racing: “Can they all… Read More
10-Finger Woo & Culture of Respect
Well week two of semester two is now under way and what I’ve been hearing again and again is how important it is for teachers to establish and maintain a culture of respect in their classrooms. When I’m applying for a job in the spring of 2013 I will probably be asked how I plan to establish a culture of respect in my classroom and what will that look like? Good thing I’ll have WBT in my back pocket! As we talk more and more about it I realize how great the WBT system can be when it… Read More