Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids: Fast Track: Seven Steps to Teaching Heaven

A really great book with techniques useful to teachers, pastoral support workers and trainees. As a secondary school teacher, this book gave me new ideas to try out in the classroom, backed up with great research (mostly USA, and if you've seen Kagan Structures before it's similar). Well worth a read.

Oh my goodness. Where do the positive reviews come from? This book is full of behaviourist strategies that are repeated over and over (yes that is their mantra but is it really necessary to reproduce the images and associated strategies so many times?). The approach to management relies on extrinsic motivation and a lot of surface-level knowledge retention. Points systems in class? Really? More or less homework as a reward? Really?The main message from this book to me was to feel pity for those teachers in the US. The strategies and tactics seem out-dated and not appropriate for K-12 as suggested on the front cover. For an alternative, check out Bill Rogers' work ('Cracking the Hard Class' or 'Behaviour Recovery') - far more useful and effective.

Sounded great at first- especially the "whole brain" approach- but as I read on and watched some online videos I began to sense a very militaristic, hyper-active teaching style and a fifth classroom "rule" that set off all the warning bells: Rule number 5: Keep your teacher happy. Really? How is it the job of my Grade 2 students to keep me happy? That's one of the hooks in abusive relationships: the idea that it is someone's responsibility to keep another person happy. No one can keep me happy except me. Happiness comes from the inside. There are some good ideas that I may use from time to time- breaking down instructions and having students teach them to each other one step at a time- so the book is not a complete waste of time- but I found Michael Linsin's work far more practical and effective without all the razzle dazzle hyperactive and to some extent dangerously misleading style advocated by Chris Biffle. Might be your style. It'snot mine.

This is the most amazing program I've seen in more than thirty years of teaching. It's a comprehensive classroom management, teaching program, and student assessment protocol that can be used from the youngest students, right through college level. It's fun for both students and teachers alike and you won't believe the incredible things your learners will be able to achieve! The book itself is well layed out, easy to read, understand, and implement. In addition to the book, there are an incredible number of top-notch free resources including; instructional videos, videos of classroom teachers using Whole Brain Teaching, and downloadable materials and power points, which are available at: WholeBrainTeaching.com. Be sure to also check out Chris Biffle's latest, and newly released book:122 Amazing Games, for the latest developments in Whole Brain Teaching. You've got to get this book!!!

Tanto si conoces esta metodología como sino, no deja de ser un básico para los docentes. Esta metodología te abre una nueva dimensión de la educación. Eso sí, está en inglés.