Advanced Certificate Course Executive Functioning Skills for Children and Adolescents

Teaching Video 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 Self-Control (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 self-regulation)
• 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