My school principal brought in a presenter from Kagan today for one of our professional development days. We got the first day of their 5-day seminar which includes several "how to" lessons on their cooperative learning tools. Unlike WBT, this is a program that has some very high costs to it. I'm sure that my campus paid a pretty penny for this training. It was very worthwhile and a real eye-opener to a lot of teachers. I spent a large part of my day thinking about how I would merge the Kagan strategies with the WBT model. My principal is very WBT friendly and she wants to have Chris Biffle come to our school in the future. There are several of our teachers who implement some of the WBT strategies...so it will be interesting to see how many of us are using WBT motions and micro lecturing, along with the Kagan cooperative learning tools. I think our school is going to be revolutionized by all of this Brain Based Learning!
I met my students on Tuesday and I can already tell that I'm going to have a great year! I cannot recall being this motivated and ready to start kids off on what I know will be their most awesome school year ever!
Hey Bill, I'm very interested in hearing what you come up with regarding incorporating Kagan structures into the WBT model. Off the top of my head, I think I would (maybe will!) come up with gestures for the different structures I wanted to use, and teach them using the 5 step WBT lesson plan.
ReplyDeleteHave a great year!
Rand
The Whole Brain Blogger
On Twitter: @RandRaynor1
I think Kagan can be the hand and WBT can be the glove. I'm going to use Super Speed Math, Power Pics, Practice Cards and the Scoreboard to manage my class. I'm currently not well set up for groups of 4 and it would be difficult for me to do that. I am set up for pairs and I think it will be effective for me to use some of the Kagan Rally structures when it is time to work cooperatively on paper. I'll keep you posted here!
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