Whole Brain Teaching Rules: 5 Essential Principles for Dynamic Classroom Learning
Are you looking for a new and exciting approach to engage children and improve their learning? Need a set of special instructions and creative techniques to create a vibrant classroom atmosphere? Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) Rules is the solution and your savior! Let’s explore the five fundamental principles that guide this transformative approach now.
Inside This Guide
What is the Whole Brain Teaching Technique?
Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) is an innovative approach to education that leverages the power of brain-based learning and active engagement to create a dynamic and effective learning environment. Developed by educators for educators, WBT utilizes a specific set of strategies and techniques designed to capture students’ attention, improve behavior, and foster a love of learning.
At its core, WBT recognizes that learning is not a passive process but an active one that requires students to be fully present and engaged. By incorporating elements of movement, collaboration, repetition, and visual cues, WBT transforms traditional classrooms into vibrant learning hubs where students are excited to participate and learn.
Explore More Teaching Tips: 14 Types of teaching methods for an effective lesson
What Are the Rules for a Whole Brain Teaching Class?
The foundation of a successful Whole Brain Teaching classroom rests upon a clear and consistent set of rules. These rules, often introduced at the beginning of the year and reinforced regularly, create a framework for positive behavior, respectful communication, and optimal learning.
Rule 1: Pay Attention and Follow Directions Given by Teachers
The first and most crucial rule in a WBT classroom is simple: Follow directions the first time they are given. This rule establishes clear expectations for behavior and sets the tone for a structured and productive learning environment. Teachers often reinforce this rule using specific gestures (like holding up a hand for silence) or call-and-response techniques to gain students’ attention and ensure they are ready to listen and respond promptly.
Rule 2: Raise Your Hand to Speak and Leave Your Seat
This rule promotes respectful communication and minimizes distractions during instruction. Students are taught to raise their hands to ask or answer questions and to remain seated unless they have permission to leave. This encourages active listening, ensures everyone has a chance to participate, and prevents unnecessary movement around the classroom.
Rule 3: Brainstorm and Follow the Teacher’s Instructions Quickly
Encourage students to actively and energetically follow the teacher’s lesson plan. This rule contributes to brain activity, avoiding passivity in the classroom. However, teachers should be skillful to gradually help students practice naturally, without forcing them.
Rule 4: Promote Respect for Friends, Teachers, and Yourself
In a teaching environment, there will be many different opinions. But in general, it is to discuss and understand the issues more deeply. Therefore, each person in the classroom should respect each other’s opinions and ways of doing things. Because maybe there is a new, better, and more unique path.
Rule 5: Kind Words and Honest Actions
With this whole-brain teaching rule, students should be honest with their learning in a lesson. Students should honestly say they do not understand in that case if the truth is that they do not understand the issue. Don’t be shy, let your brain work and analyze. In addition, pupils should give up the negative practice of duplicating work from others.
Discover Related Guides: Didactic Teaching: Differences between Didactics and Pedagogy?
Top 6 Teaching Methods to Promote Whole-Brain Teaching
1. Quick Answers to Questions
This method aims to consolidate the knowledge students have learned. At the same time, it helps students memorize incorrect sentences and avoid repetition. At this time, the student’s brain will work continuously for a period of time, and it will become a habit of the brain.
2. Artistry and Art
Using many different approaches, teachers can integrate stories or hands-on practices into students’ lessons such as music, geometric drawing, or singing for entertainment. These artistic qualities will help students’ brains relax and regenerate to best engage in lessons.
3. Realistic Action
Instead of just stating difficult theories, teachers should offer practical learning forms such as real products, interactive programs, role-playing or doing specific actions to describe a certain lesson. Students’ brains will more easily absorb information through this method.
4. Working Groups
When interacting and working in groups with other students in class, students will experience the practice of teaching each other. Sometimes, another student’s explanation creates a closer and easier understanding. Their brains will work to support each other in learning.
5. Access Through Many Means
With advancement, there are many means to convey information instead of traditional ways such as participating in postcards, video presentations, or group activities to compete with each other. Through different methods, it can affect different parts of the brain. Especially in speaking, research, and information synthesis skills.
6. Outdoor Activities and Virtual World Tours
A virtual world here means immersive history when visiting museums and long-standing historical sites. Visit many different places to experience the unique culture mentioned in the book.
Continue Learning: 22+ SMART Teacher Goals Examples in 2025
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Big 7 of Whole Brain Teaching?
The Big 7 are seven key teaching techniques central to WBT:
- Class-Yes: pay attention more
- The Five Classroom Rules: the organizer
- Teach-OK: the whole brain activator
- The Scoreboard: the motivator
- Hands and Eyes: the focus
- Mirror: the unifier
- Switch: the involver
See More Strategies: 20 Qualities of a Good Teacher: How to Improve?
This is a great toolset for producing interesting and successful learning opportunities provided by whole-brain teaching. Teachers may create dynamic environments in which students are eager to learn, actively involved, and academically successful by following these five basic guidelines.
