Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Living Above the Line

Several years ago (and I do mean several) our school embraced "Quantum Teaching".   Does anyone remember this?  We attended training and had to incorporate the ideals in our lesson plans and ultimately change our way of teaching.  I believe this may have been the catalysts for whole brain teaching.

Anyway . . . today I actually called upon a particular aspect of Quantum Teaching known as "Living Above the Line". After having had a discussion ( for the ump-teenth time) about accepting responsibility and being kind to others, I pulled out a sheet of paper and we had a discussion about what it meant to live "Above the Line".  The students gave several suggestions of what that meant and looked like.  Then we talked about living "Below the Line". They gave more suggestions of what this would look like.  This also gave me an opportunity to talk about some common prefixes and root words.  Had to throw a little content in there.


But the real magic happened later during reading.  We are learning how to identify the theme in literature.  We had just reread The Dot* by Peter H. Reynolds and we were trying to identify the theme of the book.  So we took a look at the main character, Vashti, and how she changed during the story.

When I asked  the students what was she like in the beginning of the story, one of my darlings raised their hand and said "She was living below the line"!  I almost feel out of my chair!


 I was so excited. When I got home I searched for that book.  Low and behold, there it was on my shelf!  I may need to revisit and revise that chart with the kids.  The line is supposed to represent "responsibility" and there are some other characteristics/habits that should be included as well.  But I think they got the message!  Let's see if it makes a difference.

*If you are reading The Dot for Dot Day, check out this idea using colAR app.

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