Full Course Description

2-Day Advanced Course: Executive Functioning Skills for Children & Adolescents: 50 Cognitive-Motor Activities to Improve Attention, Memory, Response Inhibition and Self-Regulation

Program Information

Objectives

Implement research-based activities educators, teachers and clinicians can use to improve thinking, self-regulation, learning and behavior.
Determine how to improve classroom cohesion and climate with physical activities that require thought engaging attention and memory.
Articulate the meaningful relationship between cognition and motor movement in learning and school achievement.
Integrate cognitively engaging physical activity in your classroom and practice with coordinative cognitive-motor activities.
Practice over 50 coaching and movement activities you can do to help children with ADHD, dyslexia, ODD, sensory processing challenges, dyspraxia, anxiety and behavioral issues.
Demonstrate how to enhance collaboration and cooperation in your classroom by helping students become “cognitive scientists” empowered to help their own learning.
Determine the role of tempo, rhythm and timing in cognition.
Design rhythmic calming strategies for on-the-spot behavior management.
Develop confidence in creating your own collaborative cognitive-motor work with your students.
Articulate how rhythmic “heavy” motor work can be more effective for dysregulated children then talking when a child is in distress.
Analyze the biological precursors to better executive functions, learning and behavior.
Practice cognitive-movement strategies to help children move out of the stress response into an alert state of calm.

Outline

Priming the Brain for Learning

Impact of brain stimulation, stress, ACE’s and trauma on learning
Create low-stress-high-connection learning environments
Biological precursors to learning
New preliteracy
Executive function precursors
5 early predictors of academic success
Create a calm classroom culture with kindness, respect & trust
Importance of collaboration, agency and creativity in learning and behavior

Foundational Motor Competencies that Proceed Learning

Balance and weight shift
Postural control for better learning
Foundational movement patterns & sequences
Types of patterns and elements
How to build a movement sequence
Activities
- Balance activity
- Teaching weight shift
- Head, shoulders, hips & knees
- Can everybody count
- Initial brain primer sequences for attention, memory and self-control

Musical Thinking

We are musical
Using The Love Notes Measures are magic!
“We Move on the Beat in Time Together”
Sequence is the secret
Activities
- Musical thinking rhythm cards
- Communicating need sets musically
- Movin’ and Groovin’ movement mixes
- Creating your own standing patterns

Thinking Interventions for Better Learning and Behavior

Executive functions CAN be learned
Build core executive functions for achievement
Cognitive skills building process

“I am the Best Coach for My Brain” - Lessons for Students

Teach children about their brains
Make executive functions transparent
“Cognitive Conversation”
Activities
- 8 brain lessons for students
- Cognitive conversation prompts
- The THINK Cards SAM Call and response cards

The “Cognitive Conversation” about Attention

My Attention Engine
Attention is more than one thing
Attention cycle
Types of attention
Activities
- Prompts and questions
- Raise mindful awareness
- My Attention Engine
- Songs and chants
- Interactive conversational practice

Seated Work For Better Attention

Alert Attention
1-5 minute desk percussion activities
Stadium effect
Compositions & orchestras
Activities
- Table top tap
- Repeat the beat
- CogniTap
- Paradiddles

Cognitive Engagement - Music, Piano & Drumming

Role of music in learning
Build musical skills through auditory channels
Imagination in spatial drumming
Meludia Method
Taiko
Activities
- In Time (Advanced Brain Technologies) Solfege

Developing Your Own Patterns and Sequences

Patterns
Sequences
Elements
Sound and movement mixes
Cueing
Activities
- You’re a conductor
- We’re an orchestra

Language, Dyslexia, Reading and Learning

What the research says about the precursors to reading
Different types of dyslexia
Role of speed of processing in reading
Temporality, timing and prosody in reading
Are rhymers really readers?
Activities
- Narrative language in daily life
- Visual story-telling – sequencing and patterning in pictures
- Lullabies, folk songs and rhyming songs
- Circle pattern rhyming activities

Visual-Motor Language: Spotlight

What is Spotlight and how was it developed?
Collaboratively reading the visual-motor language
Importance of cognitive cueing
Use spotlight in various settings
Activities
- Initial instructions to the student(s)
- Mirror and alternate
- Planer, lateral and contralateral movements for learning
- Create your own sequences
- The one spotlight movement circle

Brain Primers (Mike Kuczala)

Developmentally progressive cognitive engagement
Increase cognitive-motor demands
Engage creativity and collaboration
Engage the reluctant learner
Advanced mix and match elements, patterns and sequences
Activities
- Brain primers

The “Cognitive Conversation” about Memory

Working, short-term, long-term, visual working, verbal (auditory) working memory
Encode and retrieval
Art, music and movement improve science
Activities
- File cabinet visual prompt
- Retrieve math facts with Quick Rick
- Encoding spelling with Slow Mo
- Working memory enhancement strategies
- Visual memory enhancement techniques

Improving Behavior with Cognitive-Motor Movement

The “Cognitive Conversation” about SelfControl (Response Inhibition) + Impulsivity

Achieve better classroom cohesion, socialization and behavior with responsive movement
Difference between self-regulation and self-control
Response inhibition and impulsivity
Types of impulsivity (motor, verbal, cognitive)
“Felt-Sense” of slowing down (self-control and selfregulation)
5 quick effective responses to dysregulated kids
Between urge, action and behavior
Trauma, cognition, and dysinhibition
Block repetitive anxious thoughts
Activities
- Think-Ups
- Mary and Her Me Me Me’s!
- Periwinkle and Pace

Self-Regulation: Heavy Work

Push, pull and hold
How does proprioceptive feedback calm the brain and body?
What does the counting or cueing sound like?
Activities
- Successful transitions
- Stationary holds with the Musical Thinking Rhythm cards
- Large-motor heavy play
- Hand play

Self-Regulation: Achieving an Alert State of Calm

Self-regulation: emotional, cognitive, sensory/motor
Self-regulation as energy management
Use entrainment to reciprocally regulate 3,5,7,9 for calming in time
Activities
- Co-regulation
- Retro Walking Dressage Patterns
- Yoga patterns
- Tai Chi patterns
- Mirror writing
- Self-monitoring worksheet

Attention, Memory and Inhibition

How bean bags engage visual tracking
How bean bags engage attention and memory
Hand-eye patterns & sequences
Activities
- One and two person bean bag activities

Rhythm Ball for Calming

One and two person ball activities
Change cueing & counts for alerting and calming
Activities
- Co-regulating with one person
- Back-to-back listening activity
- Use music and metronomes

Target Audience

PreK-12th Grade Educators
Special Educators
Psychologists
School Psychologists
Counselors
Social Workers
Occupational Therapists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Other Helping Professionals