Smiles

For my own sanity I am going to be sharing some of the 'joy spots' and 'sucess stories' from using WBT in the classroom.  

There are days that you just hate what you do, or where you do it, or even who you do it with.  But then there are those shinning moments that make your whole world bright again.

Back in October I tried using the method of WBT to teach my kinders how to infer.  I used short deinitions, lots of teach/oks, and lots of hand gestures.  We did it about 3 or 4 times in October.  Our curriculmn is cicular so I knew we would come back to it a few more times.  Also- we are 5.  Infer is not at the top of our skill lists in October! 

Well lets fast forward to the first week of Janaury.  My kiddos are in library and they are readinga story with the librarian.  She starts talking about infering.  She always starts with asking what it is.  She was very suprised to see several hands go up.  She assumed they would share somehting odd (as they always ake up answers when they don't have one).  She called on a girl who in a matter-of-fact way said "When we infer we use what we know to figure out what the author doesn't say".  While she said this the kids all started to do these little gestures in thier laps. 

Yes, my 5 year old shocked the librarian by telling her what it means to infer, and the other 24 followed it up with an encore of gestures!

WBT= effective

I wish one of you could ask them what it means to synthesize when you read!  You would be astonished!