Must Watch and Must Reads for WBT-The Walls

Last Wednesday we covered the Core Four and the Five Classroom Rules, the foundation of Whole Brain Teaching. The 5 Rules, Scoreboard, Class/Yes, Mirror and Teach/OK make the foundation of the WBT classroom and really will change the way you teach forever. For me I can't teach without these WBT tools and the more I use them, the more I love them and the better my class is. If I have a hard day or a lesson does not go well then I can usually find that some thing with the Core Four was off. I didn't use the Scoreboard as much as I should have or I forgot to have the students Mirror or we didn't do enough Teach/OK.   If you are new to WBT, new to teaching or new to a grade level just start with these and you will have such a strong foundation to build your classroom learning on. You will be blown away by how awesome your class becomes just with the Core Four and the Five Rules but just like a house is not only the foundation, WBT is so much more than the Core Four.

Once you are ready with your WBT foundation, the next step will be the walls. Today let's take a look at the parts of WBT that make up 2 of the walls of the classroom, figuratively and literally :) To me the WBT tools that make up the walls are the PowerPix, Super Improver Wall, Oral Writing, and the Genius Ladder. Each of these WBT tools offer so much bang for your teaching buck that they are the next must haves after the Core 4 and Five Rules. Today we will look at PowerPix and Super Improver Walls. Now I could type up long reviews of each of these and have done one for PowerPix here but the ebooks and webcast are so great let's start there and visit some other WBT bloggers for today's Must Watch and Must reads for WBT.

Our first set of Must Watch videos are the webinars from Coach B. Each one is about an hour so settle down for one an evening or get ready for a little professional development in your PJ's one day :)




Our Must Reads start in the ebooks section of http://wholebrainteaching.com/. To access the free ebooks you will need to register here, which is free :) Now the powers that be are working on the site so there may be issues with the ebooks sometimes. If you are unable to get the ebooks after a few tries please comment below with your email and I'll email them to you.:)
For PowerPix the ebooks have the California State Standards and are avalible for K-3rd grade, though many can be used for upper grades. Currently the PowerPix are on page 2 and 3 of the ebooks section.

You will find information on the Super Improver Wall in the WBT Model Classroom ebook.

Now for the Must Watch and Must Reads from your fellow WBT'ers with lots of Must Have goodies :)

For PowerPix I have been working on PowerPix with the Common Core standards and am working on making Electronic PowerPix. You can find Math for lower grades here and below are the links for Language Arts.

• PowerPix for Reading: Literature and Reading:Informational Teacher Notes
• PowerPix for Reading: Foundational Skills, Language and Writing Teacher Notes
• Over 100 pages of PowerPix for Language Arts K-5

If you need/want to create your own PowerPix you can download my Electronic PowerPix Templates for PowerPoint for free HERE. I'll be sharing more about creating your own PowerPix in another post :)

Here is the fabulous Farrah Shipley about WBT and using PowerPixs. There is a little issue in the video between mintues 6 and 8 but just keep watching because it is great!

Nancy Stoltenberg has a great post with pictures about PowerPix. Click on the picture of her wall below to read the post and don't forget to make sure you are following her.

Mrs. Smith also has a great post on her PowerPix Wall with a camping theme :)

For the Super Improver Walls we have to start again with the fabulous Farrah Shipley who has a great post on setting up the wall and a post with a video :) 

April at Wolfelicious has a rocking post about her Rocking Improvers Wall

The perfect pinetreelia of My Whole Brain Teaching has the cutest Super Improver Wall sets that will have you all ready to go in no time. 

    

Here is the one I'll have up in my room :)

These are just a few of the wonderful posts about PowerPix and Super Improver Walls and I want to make sure we get all of them so please join the linky below with your PowerPix and Super Improver Wall posts. If you are just starting with WBT I hope you are now excited to try these tools and have what you need to get started for you can join the linky too. 

WBT Wednesday

WBT Power Pics are an amazing addition to my classroom because they provide so much bang for your teaching buck. Power Pics help students to use their whole brains to remember important state standards and core concepts. For each Power Pic there is a picture in the center to give you a quick visual of the concept, a Question and Answer prompt to help teach the concept auditorally and a gesture to teach kinistetically and really cement the concept. Even very difficult concept are made fun and quick to learn when you use Power Pics.

Each pic only takes a few minutes to go over and they are fun and engaging so you can get through many in a short time. The biggest strength of the Power Pics is that you can use them in many ways to fit your needs. Most of this year I have shown the pics from my computer on to the projector screen, done the Q and A and taught/reviewed the gesture. I saved ink and the students were all able to see the Power Pics. Key pics I printed and posted on our Focus Wall. Each day we practiced at least our Focus Wall Power Pics and students loved it. I love that I can post them on the wall, put them in a binder, print them smaller for students to review at their desk or even just project them on the wall. There are really no significant problems with Power Pics because once you understand them you can make your own

To help you make your own Power Pics I have made a PowerPoint template.

EDIT Aug 9, 2012
Here is the template with blue, red, green, purple and orange :)
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Electronic-PowerPix-Templates

Webinars Are Back

On the forums some people were asking about a summer refresher on WBT so I suggested we use the chat area on livestream. We had a wonderful chat time Friday that turned into a review of the new Sentence Ladder. 

 Come chat with Coach B, tomorrow, August 8. The chat is scheduled for 8 PM EASTERN time/5 PM Pacific. We'll be broadcasting live on Oral Writing.  If you can't make it tomorrow bookmark the site and mark your calendars because we talking about having several more.

The address is 

www.livestream.com/wholebrainteaching1

Get that printer ready!

It's time to sort all the summer goodies into the ToPrint folder on my desktop. There are the usually things like homework folder covers and name plates I can't print until I have my class list but also many new goodies to keep my color printer busy like new PowerPics and classroom rule posters. I have been using the posters in the Teaching Challenging Kids ebook but think it is time to shell out a few dollars for the high res posters from the WBT store. So much planning to do since I'm in a new classroom and have so much to get on my boards. What are you getting ready to print for 2011-2012?

Model Classroom

So I have officially been out of school since Wednesday but have been moving classrooms so I was at school Thursday, Friday and today (we have a church that meets at our school each Sunday). I have my old and new classroom ready to be cleaned this week, stacks of stuff in both rooms in the corners so the carpet can get a good cleaning. I can't wait for the cleaning to be finished because I have my new room all planned out so that is can be a Model WholeBrainTeaching classroom. Want to join in the fun and have experts guide you through the school year using WBT? Hop over and grab the latest ebook WBT Model Classrooms

It will give you all the info and a sneak peak at Sentence Ladder, a new WBT component that will have your students writing super charged sentences in no time.