Week Three - picking up the pace...

Big new school in the desert - this is one of the New School Model Cycle 1 schools built during the last few years in Abu Dhabi.  They are modern facilities with StarBoards in every room, computer and science labs, a full auditorium, and a swimming pool.  Ours has a separate wing for Kindergarden.  Previously in this town, the students went to single gender schools, but this new building has mirror image wings, separating, but serving, both boys and girls in the same building.

Whole Brain Teaching strategies update:

All five rules taught - hooray!
One of my dry erase boards now serves as "command central" for all things Whole Brain Teaching.  I have finally introduced and posted all the rules, and I have the students rehearse them as often as possible.  They love using different voices and showing me the gestures for the rules.  Apart from the well-practised and well-loved "Class-Yes?", their favourite routine right now is Rule Number Four:  Make Smart Choices.  When I taught this rule we spent lots of time with dramatic re-enactments of non-examples.  The students thought it was soooo funny when I acted out all their behaviours that did not qualify as smart-choices.  They are still very enthusiastic and eager to demonstrate all the behaviors that are NOT smart choices.

Power Pix modifications and "Mirror!"
As you can see in the photograph, at the bottom right hand corner of the bulletin board there are some of my hand made Power Pix.  These are great to have around because they help ME stay focused. And, although it's a little hit-or-miss at the moment, I have started to use them with the students.  I modify the Power Pix published on the Whole Brain Teaching website, making my own collection based on the curriculum set by the Abu Dhabi Education Council.  The Power Pix are particularly helpful because they provide essential visual cueing support for my L2 learners.
This week I also introduced the "Mirror!" strategy, which was an immediate and huge success.  These young Arabic speaking students are very reliant on multiple cues as they try to process information in their all-English classroom, and they really enjoy repeating what I'm saying and mirroring my gestures. The strategy has been particularly helpful in maths class where we are learning about multiplication, and we have gestures for "groups" and "all" which help us understand how to represent and count things.

These strategies have been a huge success so far, and I am looking forward to practising them over the next few weeks.  Unfortunately,  "Teach-Okay!" is eluding me at the moment, but I'm hoping that opportunities will present themselves and we will evolve into this strategy over the next few weeks.   Next week I plan on using more Biffytoons and getting the SuperSpeed 100 reading program up and running.