Using My Whole Brain?

This school year, the wonderful Mrs. D brought up the topic of Whole Brain Teaching.  She mentioned some quick ideas to use every day and I started using those in my day.  Of course, I let it slide after a while since I never truly embraced it all the way.

Skip forward to end of April.  I am cruising around those wonderful first grade blogs out there and I come across other mentions of Whole Brain Teaching at 3rd Grade Thoughts with some great teacher-made posters at The Kinder Polka Dot Patch.  So here I am on a beautiful Saturday, doing what all teachers do.  I am watching those videos on YouTube and thinking, should I start this now?  Or wait until a fresh new year?

Tell me, what do you do with new ideas?  Do you jump in right away, following your whims?  Do you finish out the current group and start fresh in the new year?

Do you use Whole Brain Teaching?  Share!

This week our math topic focused on non-standard measurement.  In our second day of exploration of this, one of the boys wanted to add me to his list of interesting items he measured.  I allowed it, but refused to stand still while he did it.  Instead, I marked the top of my head with a dry erase marker on the window of my classroom door.  Word quickly spread around the group and the need to work together to rally their 20-ish cubes per kid was quickly realized.  Great teamwork!