Chapter 5 WBT The brain on Whole Brain Teaching

Thinking about your own teaching tendencies, which brain areas are you most likely, and least likely, to activate in your students? 

I have been implementing WBT for a month now, so there have been some changes in how I teach and how my students' learn. Being a teacher of primary children, I routinely use the Limbic system, motor cortex, Wernicke’s and hippocampus parts of the brain during teaching.  Incorporating emotions, music (with some gestures), memory and repetition along with listening have been my daily way of teaching.  Now however, I use as much of the brain as I possibly can.  The student engagement and using the Big Seven in our class room have been nothing short of amazing.  Knowing the areas of the brain I am activating while teaching is very exciting and motivating.   Let those bushy dendrites grow!   I have been routinely preparing my lessons in chunks and applying the Teach Okay and the Mirror technique. Who would have ever guessed, we could do so much in one simple exercise? This technique exercises 4 parts of the brain, seeing (visual cortex), saying (Broca’s area), hearing (auditory cortex) and doing (motor cortex).

My personal weakness at this point would be, using the motor cortex because I do not naturally teach using so many gestures.  I enjoy challenging myself, finding fun useful ways of incorporating the gestures into the lesson plan. I have a much better understanding of how to use the whole brain, while teaching and how it can affect the out-come of long term memory. My goal this year will be to plan, practice and implement more of what I am learning with Whole Brain Teaching. Seeing all the smiles and laughter as we learn, has me excited about teaching again.