Brain breaks...

In yesterday's leap day training, a teacher at the school mentioned using music and "brain breaks" to help with long periods of whole group instruction.  The teachers in the audience asked her to turn off the background music while she was talking, but I have been looking for an opening to try to use music during independent work in my class, and starting Tuesday, math work will be done to tunes.

I will also try the brain breaks -- don't know if the 5th graders will be too cool to stand up and move around.  Maybe...