How Writing Can Strengthen Intergenerational Connections
Intergenerational relationships matter, they have the power to change lives and make the world a better place. Through writing letters to elders, students can polish their skills and build relationships that have the power to change lives.
How Gratitude Helps Your Brain
There are many health benefits attributed to gratitude due to its chemical effects on the brain. Positive thinking increases serotonin and dopamine while decreasing cortisol. Being in the habit of positive thinking helps you see more positives in your daily life.
The Right Way to Teach Reading is Whatever Works for the Child
The most effective way to help our young children learn to read successfully is to identify the ways young children learn naturally and to use those same exact ways to teach reading.
The Impact of Hemispheric Dominance on Learning to Read
The fact is, we think and learn using both sides of our brain. However, each of us has a dominant hemisphere that dictates our learning strengths, impacts our view of the world, and determines how we function in it. It is important for us to understand our children's strengths to successfully teach them to read.
Technology Impacts the Developing Brain: How to Strike a Healthy Balance
Technology doesn’t have to become the bad guy for children! However, there should be clear, healthy limits placed on its use, and a purposeful inclusion of healthy activities that are stimulating to the brain.
Why We Need Music in Our Schools
Are music and the arts just as important as core school subjects, such as math, English, or history? We think so. Whether your child goes on to be a professional musician or just sings in the shower, music lays an important foundation in all children whether it is language development, math, or practical life lessons.
The Plastic Brain
While we cannot be guaranteed perfect restoration and healing, children do have an amazing capacity to learn and grow beyond what we would have believed possible. It makes it easier to hold on to hope and to move forward, knowing that we have such an amazing ally in the plastic brain which loves to learn and improve.
What Does "Real Learning" Look Like?
Learning that lasts happens in the whole body, not just the brain. So what does that really mean? It is our senses that capture information from our surroundings and feed the brain with information from which an understanding of the world develops.
Teaching the Student Doesn't Always Mean Reaching the Student
When I first engaged in teaching, I did everything very traditionally. What I did was widely accepted as "how you teach", so it never entered my mind that what I was doing was riddled with fatal flaws.
Breaking Molds: One Size Does Not Fit All in Education
While there are many children who can succeed in traditional classrooms, there are a vast number of children who learn best through visual and kinesthetic connections made between what is familiar to them, and the new, unknown material.
8 Best Brain Foods for Kids
Research has shown that kids who eat a nutritious breakfast before school, have increased focus, creativity, and information retention. But it’s also important to keep the brain food going through lunch and dinner time as well, and you can make it exciting and expand your child’s culinary taste buds at the same time.
How Self-Control Relates to Learning
A child does not come with emotional intelligence prepackaged inside her like a little seed just waiting for the appropriate time to begin to germinate and grow. Young children quite simply act out of their emotions. It falls to us as parents to model, and guide, and shape them into competent, confident people.
How Emotions Impact Learning
All of us have worked with children who were disruptive and did not seem to be trying. What is hard to remember when we are in the middle of teaching these children is that there is most likely a well of negative experiences behind their unacceptable behavior.
How Context Impacts a Brain’s Ability to Learn
One thing we can do to help children overcome negative emotions around learning is to change the environment as much as possible. Even if the location is in the same room as before, you can make the environment new and safe.
The Fun (and Effective) Way to Teach Quotation Marks
When I taught second grade, the majority of my students had a hard time with quotation marks. They were not sure how to use them, when to use them, or how to identify in writing the words that were actually being spoken by someone.
Why We Should Strengthen the Link Between Right and Left Hemispheres
Logic dominant children need to add the meaning and emotion and comprehension to their great logic skills so that they can improve as problem solvers. Gestalt dominant children need to match all the linear stuff with the colorful right-brain stuff they are so good at.