Whole Brain Teaching Series! The Genius Ladder

    Hi, everyone again I am currently writing my fifth Whole Brain Teaching Series post! I hope that this focus on a specific WBT strategy is helpful to those of you who are wishing to learn more about how a certain strategy may work. My last WBT Series post I highlighted was "The Scoreboard", this week I would like to introduce you to the WBT strategy of "The Genius Ladder".

     So far, my WBT posts have been summarizing classroom management strategies but this week I would like to add something new! I've decided to include some information on the WBT teaching strategy of "The Genius Ladder". I really enjoyed learning more about this strategy so I've decided to include it as this week's WBT focus.

 "The Genius Ladder" is a visual teaching strategy that provides students, of any age, with an opportunity to practice sentence structure, parts of speech, complex sentences, and paragraph organization. The following describes "The Genius Ladder" teaching strategy as stated by Chris Biffle in the WBT Model Classroom PDF available here.

Genius Ladder made by Allison, WBT Intern for 2011/2012

     The Genius Ladder is posted on the front board and changes daily. Students work from the bottom of the ladder, simpler sentences, to the top of the ladder, a paragraph. The rungs of the Ladder are:

     Genius Paragraph

     Extender Complexor Sentence

     Spicy Sentence

     Blah Sentence

     Here is a filled in sample (Note that when used in class, students work from bottom to top, from Blah sentence to Genius Paragraph).

     Genius Paragraph: The crazy boy runs down the street. He looks like he is being chased by a ghost. No one knows what is wrong with him.

     Extender Complexor Sentence: The crazy boy runs down the street.

     Spicy Sentence: The crazy boy runs.

     Blah Sentence: The boy runs.

     The Blah sentence, as you can tell, is composed of an article, "the," a non-subject, "boy" and a verb, "runs." Obviously, an infinite number of sentences can be composed using these three simple components.

By having students begin with a Blah sentence, teachers can employ a very useful rule for student writing, "No Blah Sentences!"

     The Spicy Sentence adds an adjective, one of the simplest grammatical devices for increasing the flavor of student writing.

     The Extender Complexor extends the Spicy Sentence and makes it more complex. This category is extremely rich in possibilities. A Spicy Sentence could be extended with because or a prepositional phrase. A Spicy Sentence could also be extended with a conjunction, an adverb or a dependent clause.

     At the top rung of the Genius Ladder, the Genius Paragraph, several sentences called Adders are added to the Extender Complexor. Adders are defined as any sentence that adds information to a previous sentence. Thus, Adders make up the bulk of student writing. As you can see, as the student moves up the Genius Ladder, the sentences advance, quite naturally, from simple to complex. Fairly sophisticated topic sentences can easily be created. 

 Click on the link below to the PDF where you can find the full "Genius Ladder". There is a great section on how to specifically utilize it in the classroom.

Check out the Whole Brain Teaching PDF to see Chris Biffle's instructions in context or check out Chris Biffle's YouTube channel to see this strategy in action.