Super Improver Wall!

Once again, I find myself a few weeks from the start of school and I’m not finished with my summer stuff and definitely am not finished with my back-to-school stuff.
I finally found my notes from the WBT conference and was able to create some categories for my Super Improver Wall. If you are new to Whole Brain Teaching, we strive to make all our students successful. They are not competing against each other but are competing against themselves. Teach them to strive to do better than they did last time and then reward them.
Since I have so many classes, (27 this year) there was no way for me to have a place for all those charts in my classroom. I decided to have the categories on the wall next to the SmartBoard but use the SmartBoard to display the different classes.

My classroom theme is musical with my 45rpm’s-themed posters so I decided to go with a music theme here, too.

These will be printed on cardstock, cut apart, and attached to a strip of poster paper. The chalkboard graphics came from www.teachingsuperpower.blogspot.com/ and I love how the circles came with different color choices.

That helps when I change the colors of the stars for each level. My levels are 1. listener, 2. garage band, 3. 1,000 views on YouTube, 4. US Tour, 5. Platinum album, 6. World Tour, and 7. Grammy Award.
Each student star begins with white. WBT usually has 10 levels of improvement, but since I only see my students once a week, I’ve opted for 7 for now.

The Smart Notebook slides include the classroom teacher’s name on the bottom and the stars will have the students’ names as soon as I receive the rosters. The color of the star can change and the students can “decorate” their star with the magic pen. 5 “stickers” puts them up to the next level. Photos may be included as they improve at certain levels.
Next project: mini-books for their lapbooks.
Happy planning!

More WBT Posters

I have been enjoying going through Pinterest and finding free fonts and backgrounds. I have just finished another set of Whole Brain Teaching 5 Rules posters. The can be found in my TpT store or by clicking on the picture.

I have also been learning about zip files and have been able to compress this one instead of having it list as a large file. It was SO easy! In your folder where the file is located, highlight the file and then right click. In that menu, scroll down to Send to –> and select Compressed (zip) folder. That’s it! I can also upload them as PDFs by saving them in that format. The PDF can also be compressed.
Oh, the things I learn about in my summer months.

Whole Brain Teaching in the Elementary Music Classroom

I have finally experienced the WBT National Conference. I first learned about Whole Brain Teaching last summer as I joined in the weekly webcast on wholebrainteaching.com. I tried it out in my classroom starting with “Class-Yes!” and the 5 Rules. Those lasted all year. I also tried “Teach-Okay!” and the Scoreboard. I found that my problem was being inconsistent and lack of diligent planning the Whole Brain way.

There was a wondrous day when we had an all-school assembly and the students were really chatty. I went to the microphone and calmly said, “Class, Class?” and they all responded with “Yes-Yes!” My principal later emailed me and asked me what I said that got them all quiet.

Seeing Coach B and the others in action at the conference in Pineville, LA has spurred me on to try the whole thing. I do have to tweak it a bit to fit my classroom but I've got some time this summer to give it a try with planning. At the conference, I was actually able to get 2 lessons from my Music TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) and I am looking forward to teaching them the first week or so. One is on the 5 voices for kindergarten and the other is dynamics in music for 1st graders. With both K and 1st classes last year, we started oral writing, but in my class they have to sing in complete sentences. Can’t wait to add the spicy sentences. I will be adding more oral writing to 2nd and 3rd grade this year.

I have also spent the past few days working on my own version of the 5 Rules. You can find them in my store on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT.)

Be looking for more in the coming weeks as I go through the Music Standards. If anyone can help me figure out some hand gestures for the music standards, I would really appreciate it. Leave suggestions in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Debbie

new year

I am back to school as of Wednesday. Teacher meetings and workdays till the kids come back on the 24th.

I don't feel as ready for the year to start this time as I have in the past. Have not been able to dig into any articles or books on classroom management or anything like that this summer and only went to one day of workshop.

My daughter and I went to see the movie "Julie and Julia" and it was one of those inspiring movies. Either you left inspired to cook or inspired to blog. I think mine was blogging. I'm going to try and blog daily if possible. You never know what I might come up with.

Maybe I'll have time to get some lists made. My daughter, the list maker, has several lists. Short term goals, goals for her first year of teaching, personal goals, etc. I think I'll start off with a list of things I'd like to accomplish in my class this year.

That'll start tomorrow.