No Child Left Behind - Developmental Steps to Success

No Child Left Behind school performance mandates have compelled educators to find the most effective ways to help developmentally challenged students overcome their learning difficulties and meet NCLB testing standards. Successful practices supported by body and brain research have emerged. Listed below are proven steps that help students achieve their learning potential, and gracefully meet No Child Left Behind goals.

NCLB Step: Integrate primitive reflexes. Learning is more difficult when clusters of prenatal and infant primitive reflexes go unintegrated. These survival reflexes automatically control the muscles; they are supposed to be replaced with postural reflexes giving voluntary control over movement. When left unintegrated, primitive reflexes make writing, reading, spelling and math more difficult. Symptoms resulting from retained reflexes include tight pencil grip, torn papers, poor penmanship, letter reversals, incessant wiggling, slouching, clumsiness, restlessness, lack of focus, attention deficit, erratic eye control, and more. Neurostimulation activities can integrate aberrant reflexes, helping students reach No Child Left Behind goals more effortlessly.

NCLB Step: Fully develop movement patterns. Children need to build a strong neurological foundation upon which learning can be built. Putting infants on their tummy frequently during waking moments strengthens a baby's reaching, rolling, crawling, and creeping. Don't rush this; allow plenty of time for neural networks connecting both sides of the brain to strengthen - these pathways will eventually be used for reading, writing, talking, and spelling. Replace television and inactive playtime with frequent, full-bodied movement activities, leading to NCLB mastery.

NCLB Step: Fortify the vestibular system. Located in the inner ear, vestibular structures connect to the eyes, ears, tactile, muscle/joint, and attentional systems. Lack of frequent stop-and-go activities, rolling, spinning, bouncing and balancing weaken this vital system, resulting in many learning challenges. Students with a 'hypo slow' vestibular system may have a sluggish attentional system, lack muscle tone to sit still, and weak visual and auditory processing skills essential for reading. At times they require big, bouncy, angular movements to fully attend. Students with a 'hyper fast' vestibular system are easily overwhelmed visually and auditorily. They may need to calm themselves with walking, rocking, or swinging. A weak vestibular system and learning disabilities often go hand-in-hand. Neurostimulation through frequent, intense, enduring activities strengthen the system, helping students reach NCLB goals.

NCLB Step: Strengthen sensory input. Initial learning arrives to the brain through the senses. Enhancing this neural delivery system through art, music, sports, play, drama, and other sensory activities will help students sharpen visual acuity and auditory processing skills required for reading, writing, spelling and math. Students having problems receiving, perceiving, and responding to sensory input, require organized sensory integration activities designed to bolster their senses, allowing them to best achieve NCLB learning goals.

NCLB Step: Reinforce motor output. Academic performance skills such as writing, reading, talking, and keyboarding all require a fine-tuned muscular system. Motor planning activities (e.g., hopscotch, sport skills) improve children's ability to follow directions and solve problems. Hand-eye activities (e.g., catching a ball, assembling a puzzle) enhance the visual spatial system involved with spelling. Sequenced movements (e.g., Macarena dance) engage the cerebellum, strengthening automatic brain pathways needed to build implicit NCLB performance skills.

NCLB Step: Prime the body/brain. Pump neurochemicals that energize and calm the mindbody, creating optimal learning states. Large muscle movements create dopamine, a chemical essential to paying attention and carrying out frontal lobe functions needed to think. Serotonin, endorphin, adrenalin, and other chemicals can be produced through heightened physical activity to create feelings of well-being, raising focus, attention, motivation, and long-term memory. It has been estimated that 98% of the chemicals used by the brain to regulate feelings and manage cognition are produced within the body. Physical movement pumps these chemicals to the brain through the blood stream. Invigorated and focused - students have greater energy to pursue NCLB goals!

NCLB Step: Provide ample downtime. Essential! Learning consists of creating new synaptic connections between body/brain cells. These tiny gaps require downtime to fully adhere to the neurons they connect to. Balancing study time with downtime strengthens these new neural pathways. Reducing curriculum helps cut pack n' stack, piling on facts, always staying on task. More art, music, theatre, physical education, and other enriching downtime activities also help strengthen synapses, allowing students to master academics well beyond NCLB standards.

NCLB Step: Make leaning enjoyable! Many educators serious about reaching NCLB mandates have reduced leisure time learning activities allowing students to fully cultivate personal interests. Lock-step learning and hard discipline used to maintain control have reduced joyous, creative, celebrated learning. Making learning fun and relevant sparks the brain's pleasure-reward circuits. Motivation increases, helping keen students reach NCLB learning goals with maximum effort.

Summary: Achieving No Child Left Behind mandates requires developmental and motivational approaches, helping the most challenged students resolve their learning difficulties through well-planned physical activity. Integrating primitive and postural reflexes, building the vestibular, sensory and motor systems, and creating ideal learning states using downtime, primetime, and enjoyable activities will build new, durable body/brain networks, helping students reach their learning potential and achieve NCLB goals in the most pleasant, vibrant, and fulfilling ways.

Author: Jeff Haebig travels the country, shake, rattle, n? showing how movement is integral to building learning success. His work is featured on http://www.BrainBoogie.com

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