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Movement: Foundation for Achievement
In my travels throughout the country, one theme seems to repeat. Teachers with more than ten years of classroom experience frequently voice this complaint: “Kids have changed!” Yes, it’s undeniable that teaching is tougher these days than it has ever been. The number of at-risk students is growing, and the percentage of students with attention problems is increasing as well. Youngsters often enter formal schooling with diminished readiness for learning. Yet with this increased challenge of teaching, there is a growing push for accountability. Educators live with the increased presence of high stakes testing – both at the state and national levels.
School districts have responded with a continuous search for improved ways of delivering instruction, with new strategies increasingly reflective of the growing knowledge of human learning and motivation. Yet it has been long known that human performance and learning is affected by more than simple “teaching.” Perhaps it is time to seek new ways to improve student achievement.
Since the work of Caine and Caine, we have accepted that “downshifting,” or a brain’s preoccupation with stress, inhibits learning. We are increasingly aware that nutrition and hydration impacts behavior and cognitive performance (Pat Wolfe, Carla Hannaford). But perhaps it is time to look at one more foundational piece to understand that real, profound improvement – the variety that all educators have been hungering for – may teeter on the basics of movement.
In extensive work with research-based instruction, I have grown increasingly interested in the role movement plays in learning - not just disjointed examples of how it may look, although that must be a part of it - but why movement is important. It must reach beyond the basics of learning modalities, or a student’s preference toward kinesthetic and tactile avenues of learning. It must recognize the role movement plays in the establishment of memory circuits in the human brain. Educational decisions must be measured against their success in achieving positive impact on learning, especially sound and profound gain for the underachieving student. After all, with the testing (not going away any time soon, especially with the national push for accountability) districts are desperate to get the low achievers on board the train to success – while maintaining steady improvement in the progress of the average and above average student. Growth. Improvement. Positive change. Not more templates, but rather a full understanding of the components for gains in achievement.
It was at October’s Florida ASCD annual conference in Tallahassee where my interest in movement led me to a breakout session facilitated by Ralph Barrett, the recipient of the Disney Teacherrific Special Judges Award, and who this year is the Osceola District Teacher of the Year. The physical education program highlighted at the convention caught my interest immediately, as it combined sound research concerning human learning and the importance of movement in laying its foundations. The program had already been emulated in the Florida Counties of Marion, Brevard, and Lake as well as schools in Georgia and Idaho.
It is that impressive overview which inspired a trip to Ross E. Jeffries Elementary School in St. Cloud, Florida (Osceola County) to see in progress the physical education program embodied in the SMILE Lab©. Neatly tucked in the all-purpose room near the back of the sprawling school I found Ralph Barrett, physical education teacher and developer of the SMILE Lab©. Seemingly just another organizational process for running students through different physical skills, closer inspection reveals a carefully thought-out series of activities through which children gain – and improve – gross motor and cross-lateral movement skills. A program that has yielded such dramatic results that the school district has implemented it throughout several schools in Osceola County.
Coach Barrett (as the children affectionately call him) connected his knowledge about human movement and the human brain to observations in his physical education classroom. He realized that the delay of some student academic skills, as noted by classroom teachers, correlated with lack of depth perception, balance and gross motor development he observed in students. So when Florida began the use of the FCAT testing, Ralph Barrett created a program to develop foundational skills for children to pave the way to better language and math proficiency. It would be his contribution to improving student performance and hence school results on the new state tests. So what began as a way to help the Ross Elementary School Staff better serve students became a force for improved readiness and learning that has yielded impressive results.
Coach Barrett – and the academic teachers of Ross E Jeffries School – attest to the progress made by students remediated in these skills through the series of exciting, enjoyable stations. As children enthusiastically enter the lab, even kindergarteners become quickly enthralled in mastering – with the teacher’s guidance and support – each station’s skills. Some use specially designed number and letter patterns to facilitate the brain’s communication and the brain-body control. The number/letter symbols help reinforce academic learning done in the regular classroom, helping children rehearse critical alphabetical skills, sequencing, and counting. Other stations require balance, the development of non-dominant hand and leg skills. Some invite cross lateral functioning, as the station where a young girl named Raven beamed when Coach helped her successfully step foot over foot: for the first time. Some develop tracking with the eyes, where a deficiency can predict future difficulty in reading. One station invites balance and full body control, where I saw a young girl begin mastery of the movements needed to rotate and control her body. A game station develops concentration, focus, and patience. Each, in its own way, hones a foundational skill for academic readiness and improved performance – preK through middle grades!
The results of exposure to the program are impressive. Students who used the SMILE Lab© averaged over 25% higher on FCAT scores for both reading and math when compared to at-risk students who did not regularly visit the lab. An SAT pre-test was given in August of 1999 to first graders at Jeffries Elementary, as well as to a neighboring county school with similar demographics. First graders regularly using the lab at Jeffries increased their SAT reading scores an average of 22% when re-tested in May of 2000, while students at the school without the SMILE Lab© dropped by one percent in average SAT scores. Jeffries elementary school program participants raised their aggregate average from 50% to 72% over the same period! Interesting also is the program’s effectiveness with Title I students. While Title I students in a control group with non-participation saw no noticeable improvement, a comparable group of Title I students attending SMILE Lab© twice weekly nearly doubled their increases in grade level equivalency (GLE) in both reading and math.
Perhaps one of the most promising aspects of this program is the apparent sustainability of the results. After three years of tracking students categorized at-risk in 1998, the performance averaged more than 50% in math and 42% in reading after three years of exposure to the lab. Non participants’ FCAT average scores were only in the 15% range in reading and the 20% in math. Pretty impressive. Quite profound.
The soundness of this program is rooted in the knowledge that sensory-motor integration and gross/fine motor development is a precursor to learning readiness. Movement sets neural circuits to activate the entire neural wiring system, readying the body for academic learning. To achieve whole body movement, which is critical for action (the manifestation of cognitive processing), one must have whole body, integrated movement. So movement is the foundation for thought and the building block of the skills with which we learn and express our knowledge as humans. All thought, no matter how concrete or abstract, can only be revealed through activity, and activity is a function of the muscles. We cannot read without control of the eye muscles, we cannot write without holding a pencil, we cannot speak without control of the tongue and jaws. In some of the newest research we are understanding that movement broadens the memory circuit to create memory, allowing us through physical movement to internalize and cement the memory in nerve networks. As reported in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Volume 2, October 2001 Dynamic Predictions: Oscillations and Synchrony in Top-Down Processing, the brain no longer is thought to be a passive and stimuli-driven in creating new meaning. The brain, research data is showing, is more adaptive, active, and more “top-down” in its approach to processing. Cognition and action are closely related, and interaction of the brain’s nerve cell network is key. Cognition guides action, and so criteria for judging the success of cognitive operations the generation of actions optimally adapted to particular situations. The internal states become “action-oriented” pointers, or patterns of sensorimotor activity that categorize the world in the patterns of possible behaviors. Thus, many aspects of cognition and behavior are not driven by stimulus in a reflexive way, but are based primarily on expectations arising from previous experience and stored as memory networks – through movement.
Formal reading instruction, no matter how well provided, must be preceded by proper brain wiring for brain-body communication. The basal ganglia and the cerebellum, long known as critical in control of muscle movement, are also important in coordinating thought. The two areas are connected to the frontal lobe of the cortex, where planning and higher level thinking occurs. Students delayed in the development of skills, including visual perception, tracking, balance, and gross motor, fall behind in schoolwork. And children who fail to experience sufficient movement to coordinate a balanced bi-lateral body activity through core muscle activity may not successfully develop the ability to use both sides of the brain-body in an integrated fashion for efficient action.
It is through development of key skills such as these that the SMILE Lab© excels. The cross-lateral movement ability activates critical development of the nerve communication pathways between the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, via the commissures and corpus callosum. Critical for development of binocular vision and biaural hearing, equal stimulation and sense development allows a child to access the sensory input from the environment efficiently and fully. Thus, efficient action can occur. For example, the inability for a reader to focus is often a result of lack of movement. Physical activity like that in Coach Barrett’s SMILE Lab© forces the brain to track and develops coordinated eye muscle movement essential for reading.
So the whole body-brain-environment piece is long overdue. Not fluff and pie in the sky, but real tangible and sound techniques and proof (research and data driven) of its impact. It is time to talk about the whole learner. Not just about instructional delivery.
Bibliography
Caine, Geoffrey, Caine, Renate Nummela and Crowell, Sam (1994). Mindshifts. Zephyr Press, Tucson, AZ.
Diamond, Marion and Hopson, Janet (1998). Magic Trees of the Mind. Penguin Putnam, Inc., New York, NY.
Hannaford, Carla (1997). The Dominance Factor. Great Ocean Publishers, Arlington, VA.
Hannaford, Carla (1995). Smart Moves. Great Ocean Publishers, Arlington, VA.
Ratey, John J., M.D. (2001). A User’s Guide to the Brain. Pantheon Books, NY.
Sylwester, Robert (2000). A Biological Brain in a Cultural Classroom. Corwin Press, Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA.
Wolfe, Pat, Mary Anne Burkman, and Streng, Katharina (March, 2000). The Science of Nutrition. ASCD Educational Leadership, 54-59.
© Susan J.Jones
