Book Club - Chapters 3 and 4

I'm following along with the book Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids (I bought the Kindle version).  There is a book study page over at the blog http://wbtbookclub.blogspot.com.  This site is mostly for people who want to become WBT certified, so I am sharing my thoughts here, too, in case you are more interested in just learning about what WBT is!

To see my thoughts on chapters 1 & 2, read this post over on my other blog, Teaching With Style.

Chapter 3
This chapter is all about the common mistakes that teachers make.  The author and creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, highlights these seven:

1. Losing your temper and yelling at kids
2. Confronting misbehaving children in front of their peers
3. Having a disorganized space
4. Being unhappy in your job
5. Being unwilling to take work home or putting in more time than your contract indicates
6. Assuming that all children love school or want to follow directions intrinsically
7. Refusing to change or grow as a professional

Chris believes that until we get our classroom under control, we cannot begin to dive into our curriculum and standards.  When students do not know the expectations and are unable to follow directions, how can we expect them to do the hard work of learning?  Whole Brain Teaching techniques will help us as teachers get a handle on our classroom and enable students to really start learning.

Chapter 4
This chapter focuses on charting your OWN behavior.  Weird concept, I know!  And when I started reading the chapter, I honestly didn't understand why someone would take the time to write down how they reacted or behaved, because it's about the kids, right?  Well, Chris says that "you cannot manage student behavior if you cannot manage your own behavior."  Powerful words.

Out of the ideas in this chapter, I especially liked the idea of putting students into behavior categories.  I always know which kids are my leaders and which ones are my challenges.  But what about those middle kids?  Chris came up with these categories:

• Leaders - the very best students
• Alphas - model students
• Go-Alongs - sometimes fell short of being a model student
• Fence Sitters - Could go either way (maybe a bit like a loose cannon?? ;)
• Challenging Students - we all know who these are!

In the scenario in the book, Biffle talks about rating the students each week on whatever measures you want.  The example was 1) following directions quickly, 2) raising hand for permission to speak, 3) staying on task, 4) turning in neat work.  The goal is to move each student up one level by the end of the year.  Eliminating problem behaviors seems like a daunting and hard task to fulfill  but when you break it down into reasonable and actionable goals, it is do-able!  I loved this method of behavior charting and felt that it would be beneficial for myself and the students! 

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The beginning of chapter 6 starts teaching us all about the actual strategies that make up Whole Brain Teaching.  I will be back with my commentary on those chapters in a few days.  But I would like to leave you with a fun freebie that I whipped up in the car on the way to visit my parents on the Oregon Coast.  I hope you love it and can use it in your classroom! {Click the photos to download}

I'm linking up with TBA!