20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #14 Teach Your Rituals

In every school, there are teachers who very effectively manage students. At first, it was thought that those teachers had some big bag of tricks that other teachers didn’t have, which helped them to know just what to do in various situations. What the research is telling us is that effective classroom managers spend an inordinate amount of their time during the first few days and weeks of school establishing their expectations and procedures, in other words, their rituals. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #12 Let Them Move!

It is 8:55 a.m.—time to change classes in Washington High School. Students are relieved because they get to actually move their bodies to the next location. However, in most middle or high schools, that is probably the last time they will get to move for the next 55 minutes or until the bell rings for the next period. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #11 Let Them Talk!

As rhymes are brain compatible, I wrote an original one to symbolize what we teachers and administrators do to students in schools. It is as follows:

Students can’t talk in class.
They can’t talk in the hall.
They can’t talk in the cafeteria.
They can’t talk at all!

Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #9 Use Brain-Compatible Strategies

Research on the brain began more than 50 years ago when Dr. Roger Sperry attempted to control seizures in epileptic patients by severing the corpus callosum, the structure that joins the left and right hemispheres of the brain. These patients appeared to function normally but would use either the left or the right hemispheres of the brain depending on what the task required. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #7 Stop and Smell the Roses

Have you noticed that when you smell a particular odor, memories come flooding back? Maybe it’s a scent from your childhood that brings to mind your mother cooking one of your favorite foods in the family kitchen. Maybe it’s a fragrance that a particular person wears, and when you smell it, all of the memories of your experiences with that person are recalled. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #6 Color Their World

Have you ever stopped to think about how the colors in this world affect you? I didn’t think much about it until I made a mistake with color in my home. My husband and I dined with friends who had just moved into a beautiful new house. Their dining room was painted a cranberry color that provided an elegance to the already exquisite surroundings. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #2 Expect the Best!

You may have noticed that in almost every school where students change classes, there is a group of students who will be perfectly behaved in one classroom and out of control in another. Why does this happen? It may have to do with teacher expectations. Continue Reading…

20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #1 Develop a Relationship With Each Student

Have you ever walked down the hall in a high school and seen a teenager with his pants hanging low and a cap on his head? Have you witnessed one  teacher ask the student to pull up his pants and take off the cap, and he walks by as if he has not heard the teacher’s request? Continue Reading…

20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain: #16 Technology

One of my favorite commercials is one for Walmart where a father surprises his teenage daughter with her own cell phone. In her euphoric state, she excitedly hugs her father and announces to him that she will now be able to “pin, post, tweet, snap, tag, check, and share.” Continue Reading…

20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain: #14 Role Plays, Drama, Pantomimes, and Charades

I go into classrooms when requested and teach model lessons to the students. Teachers observe the lesson while I use brain-compatible strategies to provide instruction on a concept that the teacher is teaching. During one lesson in an American History class, I was asked to teach some vocabulary words that students will need to comprehend prior to their lesson labor unions. Continue Reading…

20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain: #13 Reciprocal Teaching and Cooperative Learning

Reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning are two of the best ways to have conversations about content. In the original definition of reciprocal teaching, the process is as follows: students make predictions about a part of text to be read. Continue Reading…