2-Day Advanced Course-xecutive Functioning Skills for Children and Adolescents – Lynne Kenney

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In this recording, Lynne Kenney, Psy,D., pediatric psychologist, author and international educator, will show you how to integrate the newest research in neuroscience, kinesiology, and neurocognitive education for students to behave better and learn more efficiently.

You will experience 50 developmentally progressive cognitive-exercises and coaching activities to enliven your classroom, office and clinic.

Learn how to improve cognition, enhance learning and empower children to be better thinkers with motor movement, sequencing, attending, self-regulation, and memory activities.

1. Implement research-based activities educators, teachers and clinicians can use to improve thinking, self-regulation, learning and behavior.
2. Determine how to improve classroom cohesion and climate with physical activities that require thought engaging attention and memory.
3. Articulate the meaningful relationship between cognition and motor movement in learning and school achievement.
4. Explore bringing cognitively engaging physical activity to your classroom and practice with coordinative cognitive-motor activities.
5. 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.
6. Demonstrate how to enhance collaboration and cooperation in your classroom by helping students become “cognitive scientists” empowered to help their own learning.
7. Understand the role of tempo, rhythm and timing in cognition.
8. Design rhythmic calming strategies for on-the-spot behavior management.
9. Develop confidence in creating your own collaborative cognitive-motor work with your students.
10. Articulate how rhythmic “heavy” motor work can be more effective for dysregulated children then talking when a child is in distress.
11. Analyze the biological precursors to better executive functions, learning and behavior.
12. Practice cognitive-movement strategies to help children move out of the stress response into an alert state of calm.

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