The Big 7 Oral Writing Brain Toys And more!

WBT Cheat Sheet

Big 7
The Class-yes is the attention getter. Example Teacher: When I say class you say yes (pause) class Students: Yes! Teacher: However I say class, is how you say yes. Class, class Students: yes, yes Teacher: Classity, classity Students: yessity, yessity Teacher: class a doodle doo Students: yes a doodle doo Variations: Pitch: high, low, Speed: fast, slow, Repetitions: once-many, gestures: none-small-dramatic, Core knowledge Example (instead of class say a question for example 4x4, they responds with 16) If I say raise me class, it means they need to be louder/faster than you etc. (Teacher: Raise me, class- yes!).

1- CLASS-YES:

Use It To To start a lesson Reduce hub-bub Crowd control Before entering/ leaving Interrupt class activity

Class-yes Small Chunk of Information, with gestures Teach-Ok **Use student leaders: Select leaders. Draw in those natural attention-seeking leaders in
your classroom. Train them, use them within you classroom structure. Allow them to say the CLASS part of class-yes, or to prompt rule rehearsal. You can also assign them to be ready when you point to them to announce the rule if its not being followed etc.

2- The Five Rules:

**Note, these rules have been adapted these from the original 5 rules at
wholebrainteaching.com

Rehearse the rules. When you call out a rule number, students respond by saying the rule along with the gestures. Make rehearsals fun! Use a variety of voices, speeds etc. If students are not following specific rules, stop and hold up the number of fingers that correspond with that rule, loudly say for example rule two. Every kid in the class should stop and perform rule 2.
Example: A student, or several students are being very slow with following directions. Perhaps youve asked
them start an assignment. Teacher: Rule 2 (holding up two fingers) Students: Follow directions quickly. (Snapping their fingers along with each word and say the rule quickly.)

1) Listen when your teacher is talking Listen (point to your ears) when your teacher (kids point to me) is talking (move hands together and apart like a mouth). 2) Follow directions Quickly Follow directions quickly. (As we say this, we snap our fingers along with each word and say the rule quickly.)

3) Respect others, respect yourself, respect our classroom Respect others (point out), respect yourself (point to yourself), and respect your school (point to the ground) 4) Raise your hand to speak, or stand (hand up, talking hand) Raise your hand (raise your right hand) to speak (make moving mouth motion) or stand use index and middle finger to 'walk'). 5) Be safe, be kind, be honest Be safe (hug yourself), be kind (cover your heart with both hands), be honest (place right hand up, like you were about to testify).

Divide your class into teams of two. One student is a One; the other member of the team is a Two. You want students to do a large amount of the teaching. Present a small amount of information, complete with gestures. When you finish, look at the class and clap two times, say Teach! Your students clap twice and respond OK! Teach your students to copy your gestures and mimic the emotion in your tone of voice. As your students teach each other, move around the room listening to what they are saying. This is an excellent opportunity to monitor student comprehension. Then, call them back to attention with the Class-Yes! If you are not convinced your students have understood your lesson, repeat it. Otherwise, go on to the next small group of points. You can either let your students find their own natural way of determining who speaks or listens, or provide more structure using "Switch!".

3- Teach-OK:

When you are ready for your class to teach each other, explain that you want the ones to teach the twos. When you call out "Switch", they should respond "Switch!" Then the twos will teach the ones. Thus, you are guaranteed that every student in class is equally involved in speaking and listening

4-Switch:

5-The Scoreboard:

Draw a grid J and L scoreboard like the one above. During class you will be rewarding a mark in the smiley section for procedures performed well. When you reward them with a smiley for their performance, you can involve the kids in a really fun way. Walk to the board, raise your chalk or marker, and address the class. Make a mark in the smiley section then point to the students. They respond by Oh, Yeah! with a fist pump. This is called the Mighty- oh-Ya. When students are not doing as you wish, you walk to the board and add a mark to the frowny column. Loudly proclaim, Mighty Groan! and point to the class. They must lift and then drop their shoulders and groan loudly! Ensure that the mighty groan is quick and precise. It should not interrupt your lessons flow. Rehearse this with your students. Note: You should not let the difference between smilies and frownies be greater than 3. This is the +- 3 rule. See Additional Levels to the Scoreboard at http://www.wholebrainteaching.com under the top tab labeled levels. 2) Practice cards (individual) 3) Guff counter 4) Independents 5) The Bulls Eye Game 6) The Agreement Bridge

Whenever you want your students to pay close attention to an important point, say, "Hands and eyes!" Your students respond, "hands and eyes!," fold their hands and stare at you intensely. 7-Mirror:

6-Hands and Eyes:

You say mirror and your students respond mirror. They then pick up

their hands ready to mimic your gestures

3 types of mirrors
1) Casual: these are hand motions that come naturally while speaking 2) Graphic: match your gestures to exactly what you are saying. For example, if youre talking about walking somewhere, walk your fingers through the air. If you want to explain a hard problem, scratch your head. If you are presenting a big idea, spread your arms far apart.

3) Memory: these gestures are linked to core concepts. Every memory gesture should be unique. -For additional student engagement when using mirror, add elements of silliness and exaggeration to you gestures. As a variation, say mirror words and your students respond mirror words. Then, speak slowly and match your arm movements to what you are saying. Your students repeat your words and mimic your gestures. Other Useful Classroom Strategies

3-Peat (with a countdown):

Video:

Three Peat The 3-peat is used for procedural things. For example turning things in, putting things
away, lining up etc. The teacher will give a prompt such as line up, the students will repeat the prompt 3 times as they are lining up. The teacher then counts down from 15 at first,( Aug./Sept) from 10 by October. Seeing if they can complete these procedural tasks quickly.

loudly HELP! The class enthusiastically helps the student (all talking at the same time, stuck student listening). Then the stuck student continues to answer the question, or complete the task. Used for rewarding students. Students point their fingers at a student wiggle them and say, Woo! For an added emphasis give a student 10 finger rolling woo. Students wiggle 10 fingers at him or her and roll their hands at the same time, saying woo

HELP ! :

If a student is stuck they can throw their hands up in the air and say

10 Finger woo

When a mistake is made the teacher can say its cool, no worries the class responds with Its cool, no worries. You might say tell _____ its cool, no worries The class then responds its cool, no worries or a variation of. This can also be used if the teacher makes a mistake We never do that, do we?

It s Cool / No worries

Help Me!

When students are stuck they can throw their hands up and say help me. The rest of the class will shout out help.

Brain Toys
Video:

Brain Toys Part 1 Brain Toys Part 2

1. Props: books, pencils, papers, keys, even a whole classroom can become problems, ideas, events, abstractions, etc. 2. Air Whiteboard: clean the dirty left corner; pull the screen to any size you want, make invisible diagrams. Good for illustrating the relationship between ideas, creating outlines, anything that can be drawn.

3. Mirror: Use your hands to act out a story. "First", (Hold up one finger)"the man drove his car to town" (Pantomime driving a car), etc. 4. Sockless Hand Puppets: great for conversations between opposing points of view: can be used to compare and contrast or in any dialogue situations. 5. Infinity Bag: Use the Infinity Sack when you need something that can't be illustrated by a single prop. Pull anything you want out of your infinity sack: mountains, cities, people, an ocean, a mouse, a planet of daffodils to use in any explanation... 6. Example Popper: Pop example out of the top of your head to illustrate important points. 7. Vocab Candy: Pop one in your mouth and automatically use a vocabulary word in your next sentence! 8. Two Finger, All Terrain, Action Figures, with Anti-Gravity Boots: use them to recreate any sequence of events in a story or a process. Walk your Action Figures on your desk, in the air, up your arm, anywhere. They're All Terrain! And they hop free of gravity! 9. Because Clappers: "Because" is probably the single most important word in clear thinking, because it introduces evidence for your conclusions. Slap one hand on top of the other when you use "because" to show you are "building" evidence. 10. Compare/Contrast: Bump your fist together when contrasting; lace your fingers together when comparing. Compare/Contrast is probably the most powerful, most deeply explanatory of all Brain Toys...use frequently! 11. Combos: Use any combination of the above. Use these when you use the "Teach/Okay". Instead of (clap twice) "Teach"...try this...(Clap Twice) "Props" and the kids say "Okay".

Oral Writing Thinking Like writing!

Insist that students use complete sentences when verbally answering questions. This helps to bridge the gap when they begin to answer questions through writing.

Using complete sentences :

Prompt: Hand cupped behind the ear with a smile (this is used when a student forgets to
answer in a complete sentence)

The Adder:

This is used when you want students to give you more information

Prompt: pointer finger roll

are talking about. This gives them the cue that they have one more sentence before they need to end. This is going to be the last piece. Sentence frames for a concluder In conclusion,__________ To sum up, ____________ Finally, ______________ Prompt: one hand on top of the other and move them outward in a your safe motion.

Concluder:

The concluder is used when you want a student to wrap up what they

Complex Adders
When you want students to use a more complex adder you can introduce the because. When you want a student to use the word because in the next sentence, the teacher gives one clap as a cue. When the student uses because in their sentence the teacher and whole class claps once along with the student. Student: I went to the office because (clap), I had to call my mom. Teacher: clap cue, I liked the play we watched today. (Clap by teacher) I like the play we watched today because (clap, students and teacher) Prompt: one clap

Because Adder:

Transition (also)
their sentence.

If you want a student to use also in their adder use the fast finger roll prompt. This cues students to include also into

Prompt: fast finger roll

When students give an example they say for example zoop (for the air comma) and pretend to pull the example out of their heads. Prompt: pull the example out of your head

For Example

When you want an adjective, a spicy describing word, words that spice up your writing, kiss the fingers and explode them away from your mouth. This shows students that you want them to include a spicy word into their adder.

Adjectives

Prompt: spicy words (kiss the fingers) Conjunctions (but, or, and) Prompt: link two fingers together Prepositions When you want a student to link two parts of a sentence together.

When you want a student to include a preposition into their

adder raise your hands like a squirrel. Squirrels can be any position beside a log, above, below, beside, through, under, over. Prompt: raise your hand like squirrel paws Air Punctuation Period
Jut your hand forward (talk to the hand style) and make the sound like your stopping fast by slamming on the breaks. eeech say yes with a fist pump (elbow going down)

Exclamation mark Question mark Air Comma

Lift the shoulders and make a sound as if to say I dont know

The air comma is a finger swoop, like a comma with the sound effect zoop

Capital Letters

To show capital letters, put one hand on top of the other and lift the top hand quickly to show the letter is big.

As a student speaks their piece out loud, walk your fingers down your arm. When a sentence is off topic, leap your fingers off your arm and shout ahhhhh off topic! Then spring your fingers back onto your arm to show that the student must spring back onto the paragraphs topic. The whole class should be doing this along with you so they are also following along and engaged.

Off topic bungee jump

The teacher reads slowly from any book. Kids walk their fingers down their arms. The teacher invents a sentence that is off topic. The kids shout ahhh and jump their fingers off their arms and snap them back again to where they jumped.

Bungee Reading

Practice With Partners Questions Answers Adders Conclusions

Put the chart above on the board. Remind students what kind of adders you want them to use, remind them to use air punctuation, and give them a question to answer using oral writing. Allow students to work with partners to practice answering the question using oral writing. Encourage them to speak like they would write. Answering the question in a complete sentence, using correct punctuation, examples etc. If you get down to that concluder start over, perhaps add spicy words.

Divide the class into 1s and 2s. The 1s ask the question and the 2s answer with Oral Writing. The 1s silently mirror the 2s Oral writing gestures. When the

High-5-Switch

2s are done they give a high five to the 1s and the partners switch roles. The 1s use Oral Writing and the 2s silently mirror gestures. The talker is prompting her self. They are making up their own script/structure and using the gestures along with it. The other kid just sits and silently mirrors their partners gestures. If you have an extra kid teach say your shoe, or use your sockless hand puppets, or in my room I have a stuffed animal students can talk to if there are an odd number of students.

Put a writing prompt on the board. Put an Oral Writing pattern on the board, listing one or more adders and the concluder. Using high-five-switch, students then practice Oral Writing with each other about the writing prompt. This is the pre-writing exercise. Students with then write about their topic. Make a red circle on the board. When the students are doing great with Oral Writing, push the button and they get to make wacky noises and sounds for 5 seconds. Could be used as a reward for other things too, like the scoreboard? J I think so! If you had a sub in your room you could allow this as a reward for good behavior at the end of the day. Wacky Star Fun Button

From Oral Writing to Actual Writing