Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites Book Study: Chapters 9 & 10

We are halfway there! Holly over at Mrs. Ehle’s Kindergarten is hosting Chapters 9 & 10 this time so make sure to link your post with her.

I’m kind of feeling the same way about chapter 9 that I did about chapter 8…not so hot. I was thinking to myself about how maybe I don’t use mnemonics as much because maybe it’s too hard for students to see the correlation and then I read Holly’s post and just realized that I’m dead wrong. If you want to see an impressive list of mnemonics, check out Holly’s post. She did some research and found a ton for all of the different subject areas!

I do use a few mnemonics and while I was reading her post, I forgot about ROYGBIV. There is even a cute Joy Cowely book that I read when we are learning about colors.

I couldn’t find the flip-chart I made from last year to take a picture, but I found a poster that’s similar on Really Good Stuff.

On to chapter 10! Thank goodness.

I feel like I’m actually somewhat better at this one.

Movement!

I think because I am usually so full of energy (except for the past couple of weeks…pregnancy seems to suck that right out of you) I love to move. My students love to move and it keeps the energy up and the behavior problems down.

Something I do with my kids are chants and cheers for different things we are learning. I usually try to think of the skills that trip them up. Thinks like subtraction and writing sentences with correct capitalization and punctuation are trendy as always tricky in the K classroom. Here are some chants that I came up with. If you click the picture, it will take you to the post where you can read more about it.

Then, of course, I have no idea how I survived without GoNoodle. It has been a lifesaver. We do it as part of our morning meeting every morning. I always pick a leader (which helps with motivating students to come in and get their morning work done) that came in with a good attitude and starts the day off hard at work. They get to pick the song we GoNoodle to and they get to wear the sweatband.

Don’t ever feel bad if you are movin’ and groovin’ and an administrator or someone walks in and gives you the judgement glare. There is research to back this up. Movement is an essential part of the classroom and if you keep your book handy, then you can prove why it’s so important. Don’t just think it’s for the little guys! Big people need to get up and move just as much!

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to link up with Holly!