I so need that book. If you know the secret to how to get ME to not talk so much, please write this book and quickly publish it. I'll happily buy it and pay you bunches of royalties.
I realized yesterday, at the end of the day, when my voice was nearly hoarse, that I do, indeed, talk too much. I never thought I was much of a Chatty Cathy when it came to talking more than my students do, but evidently, I am.
So, that's where I'm going to point and finely focus the WBT gun and its vast arsenal of teaching goodness. I realized I really need to get my kids involved in more of peer teaching by using Teach/Okay more liberally throughout the day, and indeed, in EVERY lesson. So far, mirroring and using gestures is mostly going well. The kids really seem to like that. But, I just talk too much, and the kids are talking too little. So, tomorrow's special focus is for me to shut up a little bit more.
I have to give myself a 10 finger woo, though. Even though my class is very challenging, and I'm still struggling a bit with getting everyone to participate and to STOP CHATTING TO THEIR NEIGHBORS, my classroom is a little bit more manageable than my fellow teaching partners', and I am certain that is due to Whole Brain Teaching. Don't get me wrong, she is an AMAZING teacher. But Whole Brain Teaching has made keeping unruly kids much more easy to deal with, simply because they're always engaged.
Oh, I'm just going to go ahead and give myself a 10 finger rolling woo while I'm at it. Today I got a new student who is NES (non-English speaking). He speaks nada of English. The ELL teacher was nearly doing backflips when she saw us doing gestures and using pictures. By the end of the day, my newest kiddo was doing the gestures for the 5 rules right along with us, as well as saying the words. I know he likely has no idea of what it means, but he was able to participate in class at his level, and that was pretty durned awesome if I do say so myself!
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