kitchen table math, the sequel

The other day I was over at Tahirih Bushey's excellent site, Autism Games. She had posted Power Teaching and Followup to Whole Brain Teaching.

The name "Whole Brain Teaching" set my skeptical sense tingling -- there is so much "brain" ... (searching for polite word) bushwa... out there, especially in professional development for teachers.

But I thought I'd go look.

Power Teaching was the brainchild of three instructors, Chris Biffle (college), Jay Vanderfin (kindergarten) and Chris Rekstad (4th grade). They called it Power Teaching until sometime last year, when they reorganized into Whole Brain Teaching. They are using the power of YouTube to spread their ideas.

Here's a kindergarten lesson (the video is about 7 minutes). I'm impressed by the engagement of the students, the explicitness of the teacher's presentation, and the number of repetitions she gets in.

The website http://wholebrainteaching.com/ has a lot of resources, and Chris Biffle has posted a lot of video clips showing examples of Whole Brain Teaching at various grade levels and subjects.

I haven't poked around the site enough to know if it is truly congruent with Direct Instruction. I'd like to hear what you think.

Previously, here:

Exo on Power Teaching

Power Teaching from redkudu

Knowing a bit about exo, I consider this a very strong recommendation:

Hey, I used it.))) I modified it and called a "Power Learning". (Also found it online).

I introduced as an experiment into all four of my 8th grade advanced classes, which I taught the Living Environment Regents to in the 2nd Marking Period. I used couple of things: The initial call "Oh, sweet mama, how exited I am to learn... (whatever the aim says)", "WoW" for correct answer, and "It's cool" for incorrect; "class"-"yes" call was used to get the attention during the lesson. I also used the points system (+ point for timely and uniformed call, and - for lost attention). 5 pluses added to 1 percent up in everyone's marking period grade, 5 minuses brought everyone's grade down.

We also set up a chart, where we compared the unit quizzes results (using power learning system - experimental group, prior to this - control; all four classes also were compared to each other based on the plus points collected and avarage test results. In addition to averege, we check for number of students in each class whose results were above 90. I used the same tests for all classes and taught the same material at almost the same pace.)

Now, discipline improved drastically. It was much easier to get and maintain their attention. I dropped "Wow" and "It's cooL" responses pretty soon, since it seemed to direct their attention from the actial answer to just joy of saying "Wow."

Most of the students greatly enjoyed this experiment and even tried to make other teachers to use this method. Some (the most advanced kids, who can keep their attention on the subject without "dog training" complained in the beginning, but we agreed that at least it was beneficial since this method allowed other students to be attentive and the whole class could move along faster. (The hypothesis for our experiment was that "Power Learning" allows students to pay attention better, and thus increases retention of the material as demonstrated by increasing number of students who can achieve 90 and above and increase of avereage grade on tests).

I kept the system even after the experiment was completed (we collected data for 2 marking periods) because the students insisted. And results did clearly demonstrated that more students in each class were getting 90 and above, and almost everybody's results improved as compared to when I did not use this method. Of course, the results were better for classes who collected more pluses, than where students still manage to loose attention.

Which simply shows, that discipline is important for learning, and this system is just a tool. There are other tools, too. But in many cases they are not achievable in our public schools, where administration does not support teachers, and students have no consequences for their actions.

I believe it. Engelmann uses choral responses (I've forgotten his term for it); KIPP uses call-and-response, Protestant churches have always used responsive readings. These things work.

Exo -- if you're still around -- what do you think, specifically, about the gestures & the peer teaching?

Are those elements important?

Or would the approach work just as well without?

This is exciting.


Power Teaching
exo on Power Teaching

Redkudu just sent this link:



Any thoughts?

I have one thought, which is that the gestures are probably a good idea.

Scratch that, I have two thoughts.

Thought number one: "engagement" is good. Loud & crazed engagement maybe even better! (I'm kidding. I think.) I assume that's why KIPP uses call and response teaching.

Thought number two: gestures are good.


Gestures add valuable information to teachers' math lessons
Gesturing Helps Grade School Children Solve Math Problems

Power Teaching
exo on Power Teaching