Teach42

Twas the night before NECC…
I’m leaving for Philly in the morning and am looking forward to seeing everyone there! I was just flipping through the program at the different sessions available, and it looks like there are some really great offerings. I’m bringing my microphone with me, so I’ll definitely podcast at least […]

Just uploaded the photos I took yesterday. Unfortunatley, since the students hadn’t turned in their release forms for the summer session yet I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the children doing the activities. This shows some of the equipment though at least, better than nothing.

Bah, appearantly the June 20th podcast got cut a little short. I have now uploaded the correct MP3 file. So if your copy was only five or ten minutes long, download this one instead.
Direct link to the show

Well, this started off as notes, which of course became a blog entry, but I realized that it really warranted a podcast as well. There aren’t really show notes, there’s basically an accompanying blog entry instead. If you read or listen to one, you don’t necessarily need to check out the other, there’s […]

A thought just occurred to me. It is incredible just how similar this program is to Montessori! The S.M.A.R.T. program has an incredible amount of maniuplaitves that are used in very specific ways. It’s never just practicing scissors, it’s using scissors to cut out rainbows from right to left. It’s a […]

After a few observations, we’re back in the classroom again. This time we’re learning how to actually take the S.M.A.R.T program and put it into the classroom setting. I’ve just had a spirited conversation with Charlotte. The more I discuss it, the more value I see to the program. I don’t […]

Buenos Dias, top of the morning! Welcome to my notes from day three of the S.M.A.R.T. workshop. After a very restless night (some BBQ from the previous evening didn’t quite agree with me), Charlotte and I got up just a little early today to meet Becky at the EEG lab. The morning […]

Did a quick session where we tried out the AVE (Audio-Visual Entrainment) for 15 minutes. The AVE is basically a set of glasses with a bunch of blinking white lights. The other piece of it is a set of headphones playing relaxing music that also has a distinct rhythmic pattern in both ears, […]

We’re on the vision section of the workshop right now and I missed a bit of the beginning due to the last entry. However, it did tie in to what I was writing. The presenter was talking about the difference between sight and vision. Sight is whether you need glasses or not, […]

Can you think of a more catchy title than that? Sounds like this next session is going be introducing activities to target individual auditory systems.
Here we go! Auditory processing refers to the skills we use to interpret and organize auditory stimulus that we hear. Typically developed between 7-8 years of […]

We’re on the Auditory system right now and we started off with an appropriate example. Loud music playing, the teacher welcoming students back from recess, telling them to take out a worksheet, explaining what their homework is going to be and so on. Easy to see how overwhelming it can be.
Anatomy 101: The […]

New day, new session. This time we are discussing Sensation: Tactile-Vestibular-Proprioceptive. All three of these systems work together and an dependent on each other. Sensation is how our bodies react to stimulous, perception is what we do with that feeling. When someone gets scared, the involuntary jump is sensation, looking […]

Time to boogie on down the road. Next stop is Wellness. She started off saying that this section was just put in to remind us that as much as we need to take care of our students, we also need to take care of ourselves. A bit of talking about diet, food allergies […]

New session. We’re on Learning Styles now. We’re taking a look at the different preferences that people have when they’re learning, such as learners who prefer sound vs. those who prefer quiet, those who prefer bright lights to dim lighting, warm vs. cold, and so on. Same thing goes for emotional elements. […]

Alright, done with brain basics 101. We’re now moving on to reflexes. These workshops are full day sessions, so I’m going to try to break entries down to specific sessions, but there may be some abrupt switches between entries because of this.
Reflexes control our movements. Obviously we want our students to […]