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When you feel like you are loosing them, get them standing and doing a Brain Break. They take only a minute or two, need no real preparation or fancy supplies and they can contribute huge dividends to your classroom management by allowing students to re-engage after a mental shift. They can be done with students of any age, usually make you laugh and challenge your brain often by crossing your mid-line thus engaging both hemispheres. They have even been suggested for use during exams and standardized tests. They are backed up by some action research I found on http://abllab.com/ which even shows some cool brain scans illustrating the difference in mental activity when someone was active right before or not! Definite food for thought to do more than your DPA to keep them engage, learning and not creating mischief!

The cofounder of this program claims that it is a "more advanced classroom management" system. For those interested in reform methods this seems like an interesting way to try and keep the class on task. When you need to gain student attention you say "Class" and the students say "Yes", however you are encouraged to mix it up and say it in different ways. The whole program is based on student engagement which I believe is one of the most important things when it comes to classroom management.

I have never seen a classroom like this, the teacher uses gestures to have students remember the concepts she teaches (this approach is used with the AIM French Program). Each idea has a concept- she is teaching Order of Operations so she has a rhyme to remember the order and then a specific gesture for each operation. Classroom Management Techniques include: -Teacher gains student's attention by saying: "Class" in various voices and volume Students respond by saying: "Yesssss" in a similar voice and volume as the teacher -Periodically throughout the lesson the teacher claps or snaps and says: "Teach" Students then turn to each other and repeat the concept that was just discussed using gestures

This video demonstrates power teaching which is a set response between the teacher and students. An associate teacher at my PDS site used this technique and it worked very well to get the students' attention.