Blog | IgniteGym

Aug 10

0

Motivation

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Uncategorized | No Comments

Motivation explains what we do and why we do it. Its role in the learning process is so paramount that it outweighs IQ scores when measuring future academic and economic success. It has been demonstrated that hard work or ‘one’s desire to do well’ can carry them far beyond the limitations of their natural ‘intelligence’. The higher the motivation, the more favorable the outcome. By this definition, motivation is a cognitive skill that can be enhanced.

Every behavior can be traced back to a certain type of motivation, which can be intrinsic (driven by personal fulfillment such as curiosity or joy) or extrinsic (driven by the removal or addition of an external condition or reward)

The different types of motivation are:

Attention – to seek approval or be noticed by peers, family, teachers, boss or media scale recognition
Sensory – to experience a pleasant sensory response or seek out desirable responses from the five senses as well as our feelings and emotions (Ie. The desire to be right.)
Tangible – to seek an external material gain or incentive
Avoidance – to avoid danger or a threat, real or perceived from our 5 senses and emotions

Enhancing Motivation

The goal should be to develop mature motivation within your class, program or team. Essential to mature motivation is ‘Big Picture’ thinking from the coach, teacher, parent and student. Big picture thinking is realizing that mistakes will happen and are necessary for growth. This will promote mature motivation while immature motivation is shaped if emphasis is place on result over effort.

The following links offer research on motivation and what might be the key ingredient for success and intelligence, or at the very least help us understand how to get individuals participating in activities that can improve cognitive and physical fitness.

Growth Mindset

Grit

How Children Succeed

Immature/Mature Motivation Theory

Aug 09

0

Sensory Processing and Perception: Part 3

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Games, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Math, Memory, Uncategorized, wod | No Comments

In Part 3 of this series we take a look at another important skill involving vision called Visual Spatial Processing. The affect that this system has on learning is quite profound. Students who struggle with visual spatial processing may have:

difficulty making visual images to “see something in the mind’s eye” or “get the picture”
difficulty remembering and differentiating left and right
difficulty in combining disconnected, vague or partially hidden visual information patterns into a meaningful whole
difficulty manipulating simple visual patterns or maintaining their orientation to see things in space
difficulty mentally manipulating objects or visual patterns to see how they would appear if altered or rotated in space
difficulty finding a path through a spatial field or pattern
difficulty in estimating or comparing visual lengths and distances without measuring them
difficulty understanding mathematics concepts in geometry, calculus and other higher math
difficulty in remembering letter formations and letter patterns
difficulty in reading charts, maps and blueprints and extracting the needed information
difficulty arranging materials in space, such as in their desks or lockers or rooms at home
difficulty catching all visual details
difficulty copying information from far point, like the blackboard or from near point, like texts

Source

Enhancing these skills vs. reducing their use

When designing instructional strategies around visual spatial processing, a common approach is to reduce the use of visual spatial processing opting for more language based processing so that the student can keep up with the flow of the lesson.

Rather, create opportunities for students to strengthen their visual spatial skills because they much more capable of solving problems in the future having worked on this skill.

Physical challenges that focus on body awareness is a fun and easy place to start building this skill as well as sharpen executive functions like planning, organization and evaluating.

Here’s one example of a “comparing” workout:

10 meter Bear crawl forward

5 narrow stance squats

5 wide stance squats

5 toes out squats

5 natural stance squats

10 meter Bear crawl backward

3 rounds for time followed by reflection questions like “Which type of squat did you feel the most stable? Which bear crawl was faster?”

Take this activity one step further and develop a challenge with a specific goal. This will get the individual to Visualize, Plan, Verbalize, Execute then Reflect how they will complete the task.

Example of a “goal setting” workout:

Get over the box then, broad jump to the wall 5 Rounds.

Rule: You must get over the box a different way each round (record how) and estimate the number of jumps it will take you to get to the other side before you begin each round.

It’s important for each individual to have a written copy of their plan for reflection and tracking. Individuals who have difficulty writing should doodle or make some kind of shorthand visual representation of their box jump tactics followed by their broad jump estimations. For example, a student may use their left foot first so they would write the letter L and draw a foot.

Again, this is a way to DEVELOP the visual spatial skills not reduce the use.

Try out some other Visual Spatial Activities here.

Aug 06

0

August 3-7 Programming: Chris

By 321go | Blog, Coach Journals | No Comments

Oops, I Forgot My List!
3:00 minutes to look at this grocery list:
4 rounds:
200m run
20 double unders
10 wall ball

Recall your grocery list.

Simon Says

Own Workout
Then 5:00 of Simon.

http://www.kidsmathgamesonline.com/memory/simon.html

Letter Recall

3 Burpee box jumps

Read the first set of letters (5 seconds max)

3 Burpee box jumps

Recall the first set of letters. Read the next set of letters.

3 burpee box jumps.

Recall the second string of letters. Read the third string of letters.

Do all 10 sets.

Read	Recall
H W
U V
P N V R
J G H T
T Z L A M
B V T Y H
C R T F P J
Q R T V Y U
K R M Y B D G
Y B U S A L E

Study Grocery List for 3:00

4 rounds
200m Run
20 Double Unders
10 Wall Balls

Recall Grocery List

Own Workout

5:00 of Simon

http://www.kidsmathgamesonline.com/memory/simon.html

3 Burpee box jumps

Read the first set of letters

3 burpee box jumps

Recall the first set of letters. Read the next set.

3 burpee box jumps

Continue through all 10 sets.

Jul 30

0

Sensory Processing and Perception: Part 2

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Memory, wod | No Comments

The visual system occupies over 30% of the brains mass and is the only sense that has an entire lobe dedicated to its functional processing called the occipital lobe.

Enhancing the Visual System

One of most interesting client programs I’ve put together was for a gentlemen who had fallen off a ladder, hitting the back of his head where the occipital lobe resides. The concussion had affected his visual system and his drivers license was suspended until he was able to pass the eye exam. Since the eyes are muscles, they will respond to specialized training so in addition to balance and coordination exercises our sessions included eye tracking activities such as Brock Strings and Pencil Push ups (research) to help with convergence. I was fortunate to receive guidance from optometrist Dr. Lynda Myles when it came to evaluating the client’s progress. After 3 months of training, the gentlemen passed his eye exam and got his license back.

Complete as many pencil push ups in 2 minutes as possible. Go!

Visual spatial skills start with the mechanical functions of the eyes (convergence, scanning and jumping) to send information to the visual system then hands over the responsibility of recognizing and organizing the information (high order functions) to other parts of the brain.

Try these extremely addicting visual spatial puzzles called Tangrams.

answers to yesterday’s sound quiz

1)F 2)J 3)E 4)N 5)i 6)K 7)M 8)C 9)A 10)H 11)D 12)G 13)B 14)L 15)Q 16)P 17)O

Jul 29

0

Sensory Processing and Perception

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Games, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Spatial Awareness | No Comments

The five senses – vision, smell, hearing, touch and taste – are the messengers for everything that happens around us. Out of the five, the most valuable to the brain is the visual system. The visual system occupies over 30% of the brains mass and is the only sense that has an entire lobe dedicated to its functional processing called the occipital lobe.

Enhancing Sensory Processing and Perception

The brain is an amazing machine, capable of overcoming sensory deficiencies like hearing and sight. To enhance each sense, the brain needs to experience new tastes, smells, textures, sights and sounds in a variety of environments. One can improve sensory memory by purposely limiting one sense (ie limiting sight with a blindfold) and guessing what is making a certain sound, or what object might have that texture.

Sounds

Try this puzzle from The Playful Brain by Richard Restak and Scott Kim to challenge your ability to imagine sounds created by everyday objects.

SOUND EFFECT SOUND SOURCE

___1. Block of ice sliding on the floor a. Balloon

___2. Bone Crushing b. Pen caps floating in glass

___3. Body stabbing c. Luggage cart

___4. Horse’s hooves d. Creaky floor

___5. Brain surgery e. Knife in a watermelon

___6. Dog collar f. Bowling ball on floor

___7. Clothes rubbing against oneself g. Newspaper being crunched up

___8. Bicycle h. Squeaky chair

___9. Rubber gloves i. Wet chamois cloth

___10. Car suspension j. Celery

___11. Boat k. Set of keys

___12. Fire l. Leather purse

___13. Ice cubes m. Pillowcase

___14. Car seat n. Coconut shells

___15. Walking on leaves o. Walking on grass mat

___16. Walking on snow p. Walking on cornstarch

___17. Walking on grass q. Walking on quarter-inch recording tape

Answers to be posted in Sensory Processing and Perception: Part 2

Jul 27

0

July 27-31 Programming: Chris

By 321go | Blog, Coach Journals | No Comments

Week 3 Programming
Working Memory

Names and Occupations

Own Workout, then:
2:00 minutes to memorize the names and occupations.

Recall and fill in the names and occupations

Story Recall

Row 500m.

Read the following story.

50 double unders, then:

Recall as much of the story as you can. Think about key words and phrases.

The First Snow Storm
Far away on a warm sunny island, little Harry Hall was born. Flowers bloomed all year round. The sun shone most of the time, although now and then there were thunder-showers.

When Harry was six years old his parents took a journey to New York. It seemed very odd to the little boy to live in a place where there were so many people. After a while the weather grew cold, and he had to wear thick woollen clothing. The sky was gray and cloudy one afternoon and the air grew thick. Harry was looking out the window and could hardly see the other side of the street. Something white and feathery fell slowly down. Harry was surprised that it felt so cold. He asked his mother about it. She told him it was snow.

When the second snow-storm came Harry’s dad brought home a beautiful sleigh. Harry loved sleigh rides.

He will always remember that first snow fall.

To Do List

Do 3 wall balls between each item while reading your to-do list.

After all items are read. Run 200m while thinking about your to-do list.

Try and recall you’re entire to do list after the 200m run.

1. Walk the dog

2. Eat breakfast

3. Unload the dishwasher

4. Take meat for dinner out of the freezer

5. Water the garden

6. Shower

7. Go to the grocery store

8. Buy strawberries and bacon

9. Make a turkey sandwich

10. Go to soccer

Own workout, then:

Names and Occupations
Row 500m
Read the Story
50 double unders

Story Recall
3 Wall balls between each item on the To Do List

Run 200m, then:

Recall your To Do List.

Jul 23

0

How Adult Coloring Books Improve Cognition

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Memory, Spatial Awareness | No Comments

While in a case conference with a team of experts discussing future therapy goals for a TBI (traumatic brain injury) client, coloring books for adults made its way onto the list. The conversation sparked excitement in the team as we recognized this activity could solve a number of problems we were facing at this stage of therapy.

1. How can we minimize the amount of hours the client spends out of the home attending different therapies? With 2 small children at home during the summer, this was important for the family.

2. What activities can the whole family do together that still count as therapy homework?

3. How do we teach this client to relax when the client perceives yoga, meditation and even sleep to be activities that get in the way of their to-do list.

In addition to these goals, we’re always on the look out for fresh, cognitively stimulating activities and research is demonstrating adult coloring books can provide just that.

“The practice generates wellness, quietness and also stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity”, sites an article published in the Huffington Post.

Beyond Motor Skills, Sensory Processing and Perception and Creativity and Imagination, which are 3 out of 10 Cognitive Domains, other cognitive benefits can include Attention, Logic, Organization and Planning, Motivation, and Social and Emotional Functioning.

A recent article published in the New Yorker, outlines some other interesting applications for adult coloring books, from enrichment to “preventing murders”.

Go here to print off some very cool coloring sheets

Jul 19

0

Memory

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Games, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Memory, Weekly Challenges, wod | No Comments

This is one of the most complex processes in the brain because it involves many different parts of the brain. We can break memory down into three responsibilities; 1. Absorption of information 2. Storage of information and 3. Retrieval of information.

Absorbing and then storing information is called “encoding” which calls upon the brain’s pattern recognition system to identify the stimulus then classify it. The third responsibility, retrieval, operates on three different time lines; immediate recall (a few seconds), delayed recall, (minutes or hours) and finally remote memory (years).

Enhancing Memory

Play around with different memory techniques such as Story retell, Person Action Object and Memory Palace, using a variety of stimuli (words, numbers, pictures, names and faces or a deck of cards). Practice memory retrieval without cues to strengthen memory. For example a common studying strategy is to read a page of notes over and over until it feels familiar. This gives the brain a false sense of owning the knowledge because the brain has learned to predict what comes next while reading. So when called upon to produce the information on that page of notes without a visual cue, the brain is lost (for most individuals). Retrieving information that hasn’t been stored through ‘free recall’ practice is like trying to find your keys when someone else has put them away.

Memorizing digits of Pi

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582

Numbers themselves carry little meaning however meaning can be given to numbers so that they are easier to understand.

Try chunking this long string of numbers into meaningful images. For example the first 5 digits can be looked at as a pattern 31415, so give that pattern a name. Try using dates (ie 92 was the year you got married) or an athlete’s numbers (ie. 35 is Justin Verlander). Think of hotel room numbers you have stayed in, the price of a significant purchase, an address, or a phone number. The more detailed the abstract, the more emotions attached to it, the easier it will be to retrieve. Once you have broken down 54 digits of Pi into 10,15 or 20 meaningful images, the next step is to practice associating your meaningful images to their corresponding digits. Caution, the more items you have the more demanding it will be to keep them all in order!

Your task is to be able to recall all 54 digits after a 2 minute delay. Keep a log of your encoding sessions (record which numbers, on what day and how long you spent turning chunks into meaning) and your retrieval sessions (record the number of attempts and the number of digits you were able to successfully recall after a 2 minute delay).

Here’s an example of a training log for this activity:

Day 1 Sequence – 314159265

Encoding time: 8 minutes

Retrieval after 2 minute delay: 9 digits after 4 attempts

Day 2 Sequence – 314159265 358979323

Encoding time: 7 minutes

Retrieval after 2 minute delay: 18 digits after 6 attempts.

Complete an intense combination of exercises during the 2 minute delay for even more brain benefits!

Post results to comments

Jul 17

0

Logic, Organization and Planning

By Tyler Belanger | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Weekly Challenges, wod | No Comments

Logic, Organization and Planning are referred to as “higher order” brain functions which means they are dependent on other processes to be effective. Organization for instance relies on working memory to juggle multiple pieces of information while trying to place them in a specified order. All three functions have to work together to carry out definitive actions in response to specific situations.

It’s logical for a grocery store to organize similar foods in one aisle to help shoppers plan their route and get all the items on the list. Like an organized grocery store, finely tuned higher order functions improve the decision making process by decreasing the time it takes to retrieve relevant information and to come to an accurate conclusion based on the appropriate type of thinking for the situation, either emotional or logical.

Enhancing Logic, Organization and Planning

Invest your time in creating systematic procedures before starting any project or task. Chunking a large project into smaller more manageable pieces is a valuable approach and can decrease the stress that often comes with feeling overwhelmed by the size of a task. One of the most widely used and effective procedural systems is the Scientific Method. A problem doesn’t have to be a science experiment for this procedure to be used.

1.) Ask a question. When you become skilled with the Scientific Method you’ll know how to ask the RIGHT questions.

2.) Do a background search. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Look out for ‘sexy’ facts and eliminate as much uncertainty as possible.

3.) Construct a hypothesis. This is your action statement, keep it simple and clear.

4.) Experiment. Play around but above all see your experiment through to the end before making an evaluation.

5.) Reflect on the findings. Immature minds use a pass/fail evaluation. (I can do a pull up or I can’t do a pull up.) Be a mature thinker and search for bright spots, lagging skills and next steps.

Try the following logic, organization and planning puzzles

For kids

Test yourself

Sudoku

Jul 17

0

July 13-18 Programming: Hayley

By 321go | Coach Journals | No Comments

This week, Hayley has been working on public speaking.

She would like to improve her ability to speak in front of an audience. She would like to increase her confidence and fluency.

Hayley has not spent much time utilizing the skills needed for public speaking. So her week is focused around practice!

Movements 5 push ups

5 squats

5 left leg hops

5 Right leg hops

5 burpees

5 Rounds

Quick Thinking Drill:

1 minute to think of as many words as possible that begin with the letter

‘B’ – remember the rules.

Focus drill:

Cross Crawl for 1 minute

Speech Game

“The History of…”

The History of…

Choose or make up your own starter topic. It can be about an animal, a person, an object, how a tradition was started, a reason why we do something or anything else you can think of. For example: birthday cake, books, supper at my house, a zebra’s stripes, a chimney, the tooth fairy, common sayings like ‘a penny for your thoughts’, ‘a red rag to a bull’, ‘a pinch and a punch for the first of the month’, April Fools Day, a wheel, a Christmas tree, a ladder, Father Christmas, May Day, a siren, a 5 dollar bill, shaking hands when meeting someone.

Tell your story of the history behind the thing or event. It doesn’t have to be real! The goal of this public speaking game is to be confident and fluent!

If you’re having trouble thinking of what to say, give yourself a :20 or :30 second time slot to fill and increase the time as you become more comfortable.

Movements 30 man on fire burpees

Quick Thinking Drill:

1 minute to think of as many items that you would find in the fridge

Focus drill:

Double doodle

-both hands at the same time drawing a figure 8

Speech Game

“Story Starters”

Story Starters

Choose from the examples below or create your own opening sentences or phrases, build a story. There is a 1 minute minimum time limit and no maximum!

For example: ‘It was a dark and stormy night’, ‘I wish people would not say …’, ‘Yesterday I saw a herd of cows ‘, ‘My favorite activity is bird watching’, ‘The wisest saying I ever heard was …’, ‘In 20 years time I will be …’, ‘It made me yell’, ‘All I want for Christmas is …’, ‘Something is terribly wrong …’, ‘The little voice inside my head …’, ‘This is the secret I’ve never shared before’, ‘I never knew what happened …’, ‘Sometimes I just want to …’, ‘You know it’s Summer when …’, ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you’, ‘The story made me want to …’,’I heard the best news this morning’, ‘The sound of people laughing …’

Be creative and have FUN!

Movements 21-15-9

Wall ball

Sit ups

Quick Thinking Drill:

1 minute to think of as many things that are the colour ‘green’.

Focus drill:

Cross Crawl

Speech Game

“Story Intervals”

Story Intervals

Pick an object in the room. You have 30 seconds to talk about that object. You can create a fictional story about it coming to life, or you can create a factual story and describe how it is used. At the end of 30 seconds, you have to pause for 10 seconds. After the 10 second pause you can continue with your story. Complete a minimum of 3 intervals of 30 seconds. There is no maximum!