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

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