Brain Breaks – Part 33: Pass It On!

Two weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to attend CI Midwest in Ripon Wisconsin, and it was just SOOOO good! 

My mom was supposed to attend with me to take care of Ophelia while I was presenting and all the things, but she was stuck in Florida because of the hurricane. They’re okay and so is their place. If you’re not, please know I am thinking of you. Email me, and let me know how I can support you and your family/school community. During the trip, I was quickly reminded of just how much our “CI community” is a family.

CI community

I stayed in a house with Dahiana Castro, Adriana Ramirez, Justin Slocum-Bailey, Donna Tatum-Johns, Allison Litten, Kelly Ferguson, Jennifer Whyte and her husband Reinaldo, Haiyun Lu, and Grant Boulanger. Every single one of my “people” stepped in, and stepped up, to help me with Ophelia, and it was SO special to see her surrounded by such love! I am so lucky! 

One of the BEST parts about this conference is the wonderful organizers. Marta Yedinak was AMAZING! Do you listen to her podcast?! They made sure that I had a FULL day of LEARNING where I didn’t have to present ANYTHING at all! I did two three-hour workshops on Friday (“Chaos to Community- Rethinking Classroom Management”, and “This Class is DOPE! Dopamine Boosting Activities for the WL Classroom”), and Saturday I had the opportunity to bounce from session to session with, or without, the baby. The baby got to hang out with Kelly Ferguson for quite a while!

Conference Takeaways

I had some REALLY amazing takeaways from the conference, all of which are REALLY easy peasy and actionable but should have a BIG impact!!!!  To listen to all FIVE of these takeaways, tune into my latest podcast episode, #77 of Teaching La Vida Loca!

la maestra loca podcast

As usual, the podcast is super short and sweet, and my goal was to focus on takeaways that wouldn’t take you a lot of brain power and can be implemented right away in your classes! 

Brain Break: Pass It On!

One of the five takeaways mentioned in the podcast was this Brain Break that I learned from Will Adams. They learned it from Sabrina Sebban-Janczak. I am literally OBSESSED. I caught this VERY short video from Will’s presentation of him demonstrating the Brain Break before we played as a whole group, but then I had to stop filming because I was the one to step out of the room and “search” for the object when I returned!

Don’t worry, you can see a longer video below, but I think, first, it is REALLY important to go through the simple instructions for you. 

  1. Get your whole class in a circle. Have desks? Burn them! (Jk… no but seriously… do it and then ask forgiveness later????) You can totally make a circle around desks for this.
  2. Have one student leave the room and step outside. Have littles and this doesn’t feel good? Have them step to the back of the classroom and close their eyes AND plug their ears. 
  3. Give another student in the circle an object to pass around. Ideally something that doesn’t make noise. I, of course, will use a unicorn.
  4. ALL students should hold their hands behind their back because the goal of the game is to pass the object from person to person without being “caught” 
  5. The student who stepped out of the classroom, comes back and into the center of the circle.
    1. Pro Tip – Don’t give the object to someone who’s back is turned to the door because the student coming back in the classroom will see it right away.
  6. Once the student is in the center of the circle, they start asking different people “Do you have it?”. This is GREAT for supplementing the Wooly song “no lo tengo” with a fun Brain Break!
  7. As they ask the students, they can shake their heads no or respond, “no lo tengo” (I don’t have it)
    1. REMEMBER… it is a BRAIN BREAK! If you FORCE them to speak language and they’re not ready, they won’t have funnnn!!!! Relax and ENJOY with them!
    2. If they find the person who does, they simply show the object and the Brain Break is over.

Level Up Your Brain Break

  1. A Level up that is super fun: Explain that students can deceive the person in the center by making it APPEAR that they’re passing something behind their back when they really aren’t. Trick here??? If you have MS or ELEM classes, you have to tell them it isn’t as much fun if EVERYONE is pretending to be passing – Just a few people here and there to distract the person from the person who is REALLY passing the object.
  2. Another level up you’ll hear modeled in the YouTube video below: Just like in Hachi Pachi, if the student in the middle asks and is met with “no lo tengo,” the circle should all yell “¡Qué lástima!” (What a shame!).

Brain Break with Teachers

Okay, here’s a video of me playing with teachers in a workshop in Chico, CA last weekend! Just click the image to watch the video! Would you like me to come to your area/school/community for a workshop!?!?!? – This is the PERFECT year to ask me because I don’t have to take “leave” since I am on an extended maternity leave! – just email me! Let’s chat!

That’s all for today! I hope you LOVE this new Brain Break! If you haven’t done my Ten-Day Brain Break Challenge yet, what are you waiting for!?!? It is free and SO much fun! Click here to join!

Don’t forget to listen to episode 77 of Teaching La Vida Loca for more simple, actionable, high impact strategies that you can implement right away!!!! YAYYY!!!

Sending so much love your way! You’re amazing! This is a challenging time of year but YOU’VE GOT THIS!

Joyfully yours, 

Annabelle

La Maestra Loca (and Will Adams who taught me this Brain Break! Love them sooo much! WO AI NI, WILL!)