Power Teaching Narrative Elements

I had decided over the summer to try out a new-to-me teaching technique called Power Teaching.  It is also known as Whole Brain Instruction (http://www.wholebrainteaching.com/).  With this method, the teacher teaches content in short 30 second increments using gestures while the students whisper and gesture, then the students turn to each other and teach what the teacher just taught.  Instead of using gestures, I pull out key terms and look up signs using ASL Browser. 

Over the course of the past three weeks I have only used the First Steps.  This include two attention signals 'class...yes' and 'hands and eyes'.  In order to get the kids to buy into this and motivate them we play a Me vs. Them game.  As long as they have more tallies than I do by the end of the period, they earn 2minutes of free time for Friday.  They can earn up to 10 minutes for the entire week.  They chose the reward.  Reward options must be fair and reasonable for the kids and for me.  They originally wanted 30 minutes of freetime...I asked them to tell me why that's not fair or reasonable.  They told me it wasn't reasonable because that's too much time away from academic work.  So we all discussed until we agreed on 10 minutes total.  Better than nothing they said!

Today was the only the third time I used Power Teaching in a reading MiniLesson.  The learnig point was: "Readers identify the narrative elements of a story".  I had our reading coach come in to video tape the lesson.  I haven't had a chance to review but her words of encouragement and support were enough to make this very tired teacher feel like a million bucks.  The kids were highly engaged.  It's still new to them so I have some that are struggling with this new way of work.  They are so used to sitting and getting their lessons.  This is much more interactive.  However, those strugglers did much better by the end.  Even my two most off task students were doing it!

I asked my students to write one comment about the new teaching method using these prompts..."I like Power Teaching because...", "I dislike Power Teaching because...", and "I think Power Teaching would be better if...because...".  Most of the kids like it because they are getting to learn sign language.  A few dug deeper and said they feel more focused during the lesson.  Some were very honest and said it was too confusing and they couldn't remember the signs.  Priceless feedback.

I will try and post the video later when I figure out how to do it.  It's kinda long...about 20 minutes.