Class-Yes Reeeemix!

It’s about that time of year…the time of year where the buildup of indoor recess, post holiday lethargy and the same old routine, causes both students and teachers to EXIT out mentally! In my classroom it was clearly time to shake it up, and so I began with a Class-Yes revamp!

Of all the WBT techniques, this ultimate attention getter is the one most often used in my classroom. The key to ensuring it has lasting effectiveness in your room is as simple as keeping it FUN! The word ‘fun’ may have different meanings for individual adults, but for a kid it’s pretty much the same!

• Fun is NOT screaming CLASS-YES to get your students attention! 

In reading The Challenging Kids e-book, Mrs. Maestra says you don’t need to be loud or yell to get your student’s attention! The best advice is to PROJECT and have a firm voice. Yelling at your students WILL NOT gain their respect. This is a Classroom management MUST! If your sounding like a drill sergeant, don’t be surprised when students don’t give their attention immediately to you. Yelling only invites opportunities for challenging behavior!

• Fun is NOT saying “CLASS-YES” a thousand times a day without any variation! 

If you tell a toddler “NO” a thousand times a day, guess what? They are going to TUNE YOU OUT! Believe me; I have 2 toddlers at home! Eventually hearing the same thing becomes BORING, the opposite of fun! My kids grew bored of “Classity-Class,” and “Class-a-doodle-doo,”  a while ago. One day I went around the entire room and had them each make up their own version of Class-Yes! That day forever changed our ultimate attention getter! Some favorites became ..

CLASS ARE WE ROCKSTARS? YES WE ARE ROCKSTARS!
Class-ah BOOM BOOM! Yes-ah BOOM BOOM
CLASS ARE YOU READY? YES WE ARE READY!!
Ca Ca Ca CLaaaaass! Ya Ya Ya Yeeess! 

Also,  make it a rule that students cannot repeat a particular version during a single session. This forces them to constantly be inventive!           

                                                    

• Fun is NOT keeping everything focused on the teacher's interests!

Even though we think of ourselves as so hip and interesting, the reality is students may not always tend to agree! Sometimes we need to mix in our students interests. Last week we began the day by looking up APPROPRIATE songs on the Billboard Top 100, that we could use in some new remixes! It only took a few minutes, and we had a lot of FUN reciting them. It will definitely earn you cool points with the middle schoolers! Here are some we came up with: 

WARNING: If you are too cool to sing in front of your class, these options are not for you!

Class, we are on Fiiiire! Yes, we are on Ffffire! -Alicia Keys 

Class, shine bright like a diamond! Yes, shine bright like a diamond! -Rihanna 

Class SCREAM AND SHOUT! Yes, let it all out!- Will.I.Am and Britney Spears 

Class you are a firework! Yes, let all our colors burst! - Katy Perry 

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Class-Yes is a very simple, yet effective tool in the classroom, if used in a way that is FUN and not predictable! If your students aren't responding in a crisp manner, then you need to be sure you are consistent in expecting an immediate response! Class- Yes and The Scoreboard work together as an unstoppable team! Once you do some Class-Yes Remixes, it may also  be time to switch up your Scoreboard! More on that very soon... 

If you have not started using Class-Yes in your classroom, read this old blog post HERE on how to get it started the RIGHT way!

Simply Genius! The Genius Ladder Ebook

It feels like forever since the last time I blogged, because it HAS BEEN!  I made it one of my MANY resolutions to get back into it full throttle!  Blogging was a lot easier when I wasn’t living at my parent’s house with 8 people total, but I think I’ve finally fallen into a rhythm among all the madness!

Yesterday on Facebook, it was announced that the Ebook for The Genius Ladder was officially released! I immediately downloaded it and used it with my students today. If you have never used The Genius Ladder, you are truly missing out! It is one of my students’ FAVORITE classroom activities because we create crazy, zany Genius Paragraphs from basic BLAH sentences!  Come on, how much convincing do you need besides hearing that my 5^th graders actually cheered when I said I downloaded Genius Ladder slides for WRITING!?  If you need an easy to follow break down of how to use The Genius Ladder, check out one of my older posts HERE.

If you don’t have a Smartboard, it is completely okay!  I don’t have one and it worked just fine on my good old classroom computer.  They seemed to enjoy the graphics, and well, they like anything that is more high- tech than my whiteboard! It has three levels: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. The first level is more of an introduction to how to orally practice verbs, adjectives, and prepositions, while giving more details about a topic.  Intermediate goes a step further and requires students to use BECAUSE in their Genius Paragraphs.  Advanced requires BECAUSE and an appositive, which is a phrase surrounded by commas, that gives more information about the noun it follows.

We jumped right into the first Advanced slide, after they convinced me they were up for the challenge.  Students switched out the nouns and verbs in the sentence for their own and added adjectives to describe the ballplayer, such as anxious and smelly. 

This was the fun part!  Students used the Extender Sentence to switch out their own appositives about Biff!  After they rambled them off to each other during Teach:Okay, I had them share out their examples to the class.  Here are a few they came up with:

the frightening, giant captain,

the clumsiest person on the team

the pitcher who throws as fast as a cheetah

After sharing out appositives, it was finally time to create Genius paragraphs!  NEVER, I mean NEVER, show students the example paragraph before doing their own, because as we all know they end up stealing the ideas as their own!  After choosing on a few students to create paragraphs orally using adders, I had them write for ten minutes while I did Red/ Green Marker Proofreading.  By this point they are more than eager to get to write their own creative stories, and they usually drop their shoulders  in sheer disappointment when I say time is up!  Say bye-bye to  the ever annoying, “I’m done writing.  Now what do I do?” 

Here is a student example:

If you want to download the FREE Genius Ladder Ebook, go to WholeBrainTeaching.com, register and click on "Free Ebooks"!  If you do not register, the book does not appear under Ebooks!