Whole Brain Teaching - first week - four strategies

A fabulous first week of Whole Brain Teaching

 

          This is my second year teaching in the United Arab Emirates as part of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC)s 10-Year Strategic Plan for school reform. The reform program aims to provide an international standard of bi-literate education in ADEC schools by improving the quality of teaching, improving the school environment, and making the program accessible for more children.
          I teach at a beautiful and newly built Cycle 1 (primary) school about 100 km away from Al Ain.  It is a very traditional community located near the border with Oman in the middle of the desert.  ADEC provides buses for the English Medium Teachers who are generally housed in Al Ain and commuting to this remote school location - my bus ride is about 1 hour each way.
          Last year was the first year boys and girls were educated in the same school building (different wings), and it was the first year that the boys had female teachers.  I think it was a culture shock for all of us at the school, and much of the year's work was focused on shaping appropriate school behaviours, procedures and social skills in the children.  Toward the middle of the year I began experimenting with WBT strategies in an attempt to calm some of the challenging behaviours and difficulties in my boys classroom.  They responded so well to the strategies that I decided to use WBT from day one this year.  

 

Now, the students have been back at school for one week.  I think the hard work of all the teachers last year has paid off, and my new 2nd grade students are quite amazing.  They are native Arabic speakers immersed daily in a two-hour block of English, Math and Science, and they are loving their first experiences with Whole Brain Teaching. 



I'm very excited that the students have learnt "Class? Yes!", "Hands and Eyes", "Rule Number One", and "Rule Number Two".  Based on my experiences using pieces of WBT before summer break, I chose to modify the language for some of the rules, so they look like this:
 



Modified Rules







Rule Number 1: Do it quickly! (same gestures)

Rule Number 2: Bubble! (make the two with fingers,
then fingers on cheeks and put a bubble in your mouth)

 

What I'm most excited about this year, however, is trying to implement "Teach! Okay!", which is a complicated thing for these young students who have widely varying levels of English and are new to Western teaching styles.  My first goal is simply to get them to turn to each other and speak to each other in English.  I started this week, by giving the students red or yellow counters to hold - to make their roles more concrete -and we began by playing a version of "Simon Says..." with children following instructions for either reds or yellows.  It will take some time, but I think that using "Teach! Okay!" in the ELL classroom has phenomenal possibilities. 

For more information about the school reform program in the United Arab Emirates:

http://www.adec.ac.ae/English/Pages/Schools.aspx