Class Opener: Brain Breakfast

 What is Brain Breakfast?

Brain breakfast is a time in our classroom, right after the soft open, where students build neurons by doing the same thing every day. 

What does it include?

I. Rules and Expectations

    It is important to review the expectations of our classroom every single day. I keep mine simple. I got them from Power Teaching, also called Whole-Brain Teaching. I've changed rule #5 from "Make your dear teacher happy," because I want them to think about each other. If they make each other happy, they will also be making me happy. I also added rule #6 to save my sanity. 
    - Rule #1: Follow directions quickly
    - Rule #2: Raise your hand for permission to speak during lesson time
    - Rule #3: When you leave your seat, have a reason and return quickly.
    - Rule #4: Make strong choices
    - Rule #5: Make your dear classmates happy
    - Rule #6: If you need something, doooooooon't call Mrs. Rodgers' name.

II. Class Points Math

   After we review our rules and expectations, I like to go straight into adding up the class points they earned as a class yesterday. I use this slide in my daily slide deck. It includes a graphic organizer (or math mat,) and a set of sentence frames. I guide students through the sentence frames and they practice using them in pairs at the beginning. By the second week, my second graders sound like college professors. "I lock 2 because it is greater. I pop 1 because it is the least." 

III. 2 Parts*

   Eduprotocols are a method for teaching content. If you haven't played with them at all, please check them out. There is so much that you can do with so little effort. You can run them independently, or you can do several at once. You can stack eduprotocols, which means that you use different protocols and different methods all on the same content. Same Content, but different protocols. If you rack the eduprotocols, you are using the SAME eduprotocol with a variety of content. So, different content, same protocol.  Here is a TikTok of a teacher explaining it in the context of upper graders using the Great Compromise as content.

    I share this T CHART with students before showing them a GIF. They observe the GIF and then name the nouns and verbs they see. The original is called 8 Parts* and it asks students to also name adjectives, adverts, and other elements. 




IV. Word of the Day

   During the Word of the Day part of our daily Brain Breakfast, students take apart a word that follows the phonics work we are doing during class. Students write the word, a word that rhymes, one that doesn't, identifies which type of syllabification is being used (I usually cover this up the entire first trimester,) they count the number of letters and identify how many or vowels, how many are syllables, and which parts of speech category the word belongs in.

V. Number of the Day

   This is a mathrep, another Eduprotocol that I use during our morning Brain Breakfast. Students follow along on their matching template. I laminate these or just slip them into plastic sheet protectors. 

VI. Calendar

I create calendars on Canva. I use the same template every year, and each individual number is actually a larger image that I crop down. That way, I don't have to go hunting for 30 or 31 different images. I like to ask these kinds of questions:
- What will the date be in two days? 
- What was the date three weeks ago?
- When is the next Monday?

ect. I will write about my Calendar Time more extensively in the next blogpost -if you can't wait, here's a glimpse at my rough draft for next week.



VII. Gestures

   I use the Grapheme Guy's video. It's simple, and I like that he utilizes the worm, grass, plane, and cloud lines in his gestures. Gestures, movement, and music can help build neurons faster. It's good for the brain to do different modalities, and the neurons that fire together, wire together.



VIII. GoNoodle

    After our brains are full from breakfast, we get up and move with some GoNoodle. Go Noodle keeps track of student progress. Each level has 10 points. I like to use this to create fact families. I will go more into depth about what I do with GoNoodle in a future post.


I love that each monster has something that they represent, so I can choose, or the students can choose, which value they would like to focus on.

I love Brain Breakfast time and I see the benefits all day. Students use formal language, and I can front load so much of our day's learning into this routine. 

What do mornings look like in your room?

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