WBT Intern, 2011-12

I came home this afternoon to find an email informing me that I have been selected as one of the 2011-12 Whole Brain Teaching Interns!  I am shocked, excited, honored, and a little nervous as to what I have gotten myself into!  The WBT internship requires blogging and posting on the forum, which I am already familiar with.  It will also push me to try new things and I'm sure I will receive advice and constructive criticism from the official WBT trainers.  If I succeed, I may be able to join the team as a WBT trainer next year!  I'm excited to share my experiences here and share the joy of WBT with others.


Now... on to my original purpose of this post.  I wanted to expound on my Smoothy Bumper post.

This past week I played the Mind Reader game with the almost-first-grader that I tutor.  I called out two numbers, and she used the chart to answer the question, "What number in the middle am I thinking of?"   We also played the Clapper game again to practice +2.  The colors of the number wall on Smoothy Bumper Planet help the students to see patterns.  For example, my second graders noticed last year that when adding 2, the addend and the sum are always on the same color- thus odd plus two equals odd and even plus two equals even.  (Oooo...I'm thinking now that the students could teach each other the pattern they see in complete sentences using air punctuation!)  The little girl that I tutor did a great job hopping her finger to the sums and saying the number sentences, but she isn't to the point where she can communicate the patterns yet.  Here are some wise words from the Smoothy Bumper Planet book:

The more time your students spend on the Number Wall, walking their fingers back and forth, leaping from one row to another, using backward or forward diagonals, the more the numbers themselves become visual, even tactile, rather than mere abstractions.

To add some variety, I changed up the Clapper game and allowed  my student to play independently by rolling a 10-sided dice.  After rolling, she found the number on her Smoothy Bumper Planet, hopped her finger over +2, and stated the complete number sentence.  This would be an easy way to extend the game from a whole group activity to a partner game or math center activity.

Don't forget that all the Whole Brain Teaching books are available online for free!

Allison

WBT Intern, 2011-12