Whole Brain Teaching!

I absolutely love this quote!  I made the choice to teach using Whole Brain Teaching because I saw this quote a few years back.  Every day I watch my students learn and grow and teach each other things using hand motions and terminology that we've come up with together.  I fully encourage you when you see something new we're learning to ask your kinder to teach it to you using hand motions.  Ask them to do "mirror" and teach it to you which means you'll repeat it after them...let's be honest, these littles LOVE to be able to be the teacher which makes my heart happy!  

Building Stamina!

We are rocking and rolling in literacy centers now! After I got my small group working on something I looked up to find everyone doing "their job!" Happy moment for this dear teacher. Before we go to centers we state our expectations together with our hand motions:

We stay in one spot.

We work the whole time.

We get started right away.

When we hear the clean up bell, we stop right away and come back to the carpet like a learner.

Vowels, Consonants and Grammar...Oh My!

This week we have been really working on vowels and consonants after last weeks introduction to them. As part of Whole Brain, we recite them and teach them to a classmate using hand motions (sign language in this case) to help us. We've discussed long/short vowel sounds and talked about long vowels "say their name."

We were also introduced to nouns (person, place, thing) and verbs (something you can do/an action). We will continue focusing on these concepts thoughout the day across curriculum!  

I encourage you to have your kinder "teach" you these and have them find them when you're out and about, in the paper, etc.!

The Rules!

Ask your kinder to recite our morning rule chant, they're getting good at it, hand motions and all :). 

First Day!

We had a STELLAR first day!  We talked about our first day feelings, met all our new pals, learned and practiced classroom/school routines and procedures, and started learning Whole Brain techniques we will use all year in the classroom.  Ask your kinder about the following:

• Class? Yes!
• M-I-Z...Z-O-U
• Teach..Okay!
• Hands and Eyes