Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Whole Brain Teaching At Home


Whole Brain teaching is a revolutionary program to get kids excited about learning, following rules, listening and becoming better students in the process. Which makes the teachers job of teaching a lot easier. I wondered if this would be right for me. I use the K12 program for my child's teaching and he is only 1 student. How could this work when it was designed to help a large class? Well I'm going to find out. I hope you follow me on this journey.

Day 1:   School has not started yet. First day of school is September 4th. I'm more excited about it than he is. After watching a few videos on WBT I decided to try it. You begin with the rules. OK here we go. Here is a snapshot of our conversation:

      Me: Lets go over the rules before school starts.
    Him: No not school today
      Me: Its not school its the rules for school you need to know them before school starts.
     Him: Moan groan
     Me: When I say class you say yes
     Me: Class
   Him: YES. 
  wow I thought he participated without a fight
   Me: However I say class you say Yes
   Me: Class Class
  Him: Yes Yes
   Me: classity classity
  Him: yesity yesity
wow OK this is working like they said it would lets try the rules now
 Me: Rule 1 (using gestures) follow directions quickly
He repeated the rule using the gestures without being told
 Me Rule 2 Raise hand before speaking
he again repeated me
Within 5 minutes he knew all 5 rules and I had his full attention. He was engaged, excited and ready to learn.
I'm also going to incorporate circle time and story time into our daily schedule. Instead of dreading the arguments of a typical school day I'm looking forward to making learning fun and enjoying my time with my son.
  I will keep posting updates on how this system is working and also if it stops working.
Again I hope you follow me on this journey to implement the WBT system into a home school (1child) experience.