Speaker 4: Hey everybody!
Welcome to Tier 1 Interventions, where we work on helping you
gain the core in your classroom.
I am Cheri Dotterer, your classroom coach.
That's Cheri with a C and Dot with a stutter.
I'm here today with Jonily Zupancic, your instructional coach on mathematics.
And we are here to help learn, help you learn how to deliver your math
instruction in a very unique way.
Today we are going to talk about the pain problem.
Jonily
Speaker 6: get us started!
Hey everybody.
I'm Jay-Z.
Jay-Z in the house, Jonily Zupancic and Tier one Interventions is, as Cheri said,
strengthening your core regular classroom.
So this is for specifically the classroom teacher, partnering with the
intervention specialist, instructional coach, curriculum leader, principal.
Special Service Provider, Occupational Therapist, Speech Therapist.
How can kids get exactly what they need in the Tier 1 Core Regular General Classroom?
Too often we have kids leaving the room to be pulled out for small
group Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention.
Speaker 11: Last week, we stopped the video when John Lee asked why.
Let's tune in this week and find out how I answered.
Speaker 6: And then he, for the next 10 minutes, was so focused and engaged
and in tune and working independently.
See, focus, a focus trigger for him, he's got to spin and jump.
Then he can attune to the task.
And he was listening to every word you said.
Why?
Speaker 4: Why, Cheri?
Because he was shifting his brain the way he knew how to make attention.
The movement was turning off parts of his brain that he needed
so that he could auditorily understand what you were saying.
If you would have just had him sitting there, his brain would have been, I need
to spin, I need to spin, I need to spin, and that's all his brain would have heard.
It would have never heard.
The stuff that you were trying to tell him by spinning that
part of his brain was occupied.
So the other part of his brain could work.
Speaker 6: And so in typical traditional school setting, we make everybody sit, we
make everybody look at us with their eyes.
We make everybody comply.
And the three or four kids that Look like they're listening.
We explain all the directions and we release them.
And then you get the, what are we doing?
Oh my gosh, I just told you.
The way that you were making them comply when you were explaining
negated the whole phrase that you said.
Now I can't have 17 kids up and spinning and acting a fool.
But you've got 2 or 3.
And they might need to do this.
As we're giving directions, because nothing frustrates a teacher more
than when we explain all these directions so articulately, and then
five kids are like, what are we doing?
So then we release them and then we get frustrated.
Then learn how to teach and explain directions.
So why can't the whole classroom
Speaker 4: do spinning activity?
Why can't they stand next to their desk, do an activity that's controlled by the
teacher that increase, that facilitates movement, that facilitates proprioception,
that facilitates the interoception and the vestibular systems as well, so that for a
short amount of time, they're all engaging in that and then do the instruction.
And that is what I've been preaching for the last two years.
Speaker 6: Janet, what are you doing?
You're giving us video.
Explain to us.
Janet, you teach 7th grade.
Talk to us.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I see a lot of, I have two standing tables.
I have one standing table that's on wheels.
And this one kid goes back and forth because he can't sit.
I've got a yoga ball and our chairs naturally rock.
And they're all, woo!
And I still have to do the crazy eight.
I don't know if I call it crazy yet.
I call it whatever we need to refocus.
I'll have them push against the ceiling.
I'll say we'll do an upside down handstand.
And I tell them to push harder because, I'm a lot heavier than they are.
And then they cross their hands and we make an eight with our arms.
And then I'll have them do their name in cursive because that's just funny.
And they giggle because they like, Don't know how to do cursive.
And we're all just going, ah sometimes I do angles.
I'll say, give me a, cute angle.
And then I'm like, give me a straight angle.
And then we'll do vertical angles because that's all part of the
seven gate curriculum and they don't tend to remember them.
So we just keep doing it over and over again.
And it also helps us refocus.
And I sneak those extra experiences in there.
Love
Speaker 6: it so much.
And what's interesting is those are examples again of focus triggers and a
couple that you mentioned cross midline.
Now, I did one yesterday on the kindergarten audio.
I was very intentional and deliberate in this kindergarten class because I
wanted to put as much in there that people could analyze as possible.
So when we were transitioning from one thing to another and I wanted.
Everybody's attention, and I wanted all eyes on me.
I don't always want this, but I wanted it because we were going to
do something a little more complex.
Now, my expectation is I want everybody looking at me, and I want everybody
listening, but my expectation is I know there's going to be five or six kids
that aren't going to know what I'm doing.
After I say it anyway, and as long as we have that expectation
when we do that's fine.
The reason I wanted everybody focused is I put pencils down and we wiggled fingers
because I wanted to transition their brain to another topic, to another skip
counting number, to a different shape.
And I said, okay, wiggle your fingers and I waited for everyone's attention.
We touched ears.
Opposite ears, opposite ears.
And we did that five or six times.
And what that does is it just, it's a focus trigger.
It crosses midline.
It gets everybody in tune.
And then I can tell them we're switching gears.
The brain is ready now for a next step.
These subtle focus triggers, there are so many categories of them, and there are
so many simple things that you can do.
Cheri's handstand flip that Janet mentioned.
These are all specific focus triggers that will re engage and refocus students.
at any time.
Speaker 3: I also wanted to make a point that you may be finding
some kids who can't transition from the board to your table.
So those are the kids you're going to have to watch for that.
If you're doing something at the board now, I know you
brought them closer to you.
You may have picked up on some of the kids that was good to have the paper
and give it to them because those are the kids that can't go up and down.
It's vestibular.
Also I been finding a lot of kids lately that have really a lot of trouble
with tracking and those are the kids you're going to find that maybe can't
go across your one 20 chart and are going to need to have the use their
finger or a pointer going across.
So you're going to have to watch where their head in an
alignment kind of thing goes.
Speaker 12: There is so much more to mathematics than meets the eye.
It's not just computation.
There is so much cognitive aspect going on that's why we bring you these
episodes of tier one interventions so that you can learn how complex the mind
is as it's working through the math.
Kids that are struggling have difficulty making those connections.
I hope you turn in next week to hear our next episode of Tier 1 Interventions.
Until then, make sure that you click that subscribe button, leave a comment, and
share this with five of your friends to let them know that we are out there and
we are hoping that this is helping you understand what's happening behind the
scenes, as they say, or in the brain.
With tier one interventions
Speaker 13: and
Speaker 12: how do we keep our classrooms coherent, even working alongside the
related service provider or other professionals and paraprofessionals
that are working the classroom.
See you next week on Tier one Interventions.