Teaching With the Brain in Mind

early motor stimulation on learning for many
years. He has used eye-hand coordination tasks,
spinning, tumbling, rocking, pointing, counting,
jumping, and ball toss activities to stimulate the
early neural growth patterning. Palmer’s “Chance
to Learn Project” at the Shingle Creek Elementary
School in Minneapolis showed positive effects on
students through the Metropolitan Readiness Test,
Test of Visual Perception, and the Otis Group
Intelligence Test (Palmer 1980). In similar studies,
the experimental group consistently outperformed
the control group.
The benefits of early motor stimulation don’t
end in elementary school; there is tremendous
value in novel motor stimulation throughout secondary
school and the rest of our life (Brink
1995). Schools ought to make a planned program
of specific motor stimulation mandatory in K-1
grades, but they also should integrate physical
activity across the curriculum. In sports, we expect
learners to use their brains for counting, planning,
figuring, and problem solving. Every athlete is
highly engaged in cognitive functions. It makes
sense that we’d expect students to use their bodies
for kinesthetic learning in the academic classes
(see fig. 4.3).
Enrichment Through Thinking and Problem
Solving
The single best way to grow a better brain is
through challenging problem solving. This creates
new dendritic connections that allow us to make
even more connections. The brain is ready for simple,
concrete problem solving at age 1 or 2. But the
more complicated variety usually has to wait.
There’s a spurt of dendritic branching in the right
hemisphere between 4 and 7 and in the left hemi-
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FIGURE 4.3
Enriched Environments and the Brain
Key Factors That Influence Early Brain
Development and Academic Achievement
Nutrition
Challenge
and the Arts
Exercise
Genes
Feedback
sphere between 9 and 12 (Hannaford 1995). Both
sides are fully developed and usually ready for
complex abstractions by ages 11 to 13. By then,
the major bridge between left and right hemispheres,
the corpus callosum, is fully matured. At
that point it carries four billion messages per second
across its 200–300 million nerve fibers and is
ready for extra challenges. Some maturing of the
brain continues into the mid-20s.
Kids need complex, challenging problems to
solve. But problem solving is not limited to one
area of the brain. After all, you can solve a problem
on paper, with a model, with an analogy or
metaphor, by discussion, with statistics, through
artwork, or during a demonstration. As a result,
there are as many neural pathways as we need to
develop in children’s brains as there are ways to
solve a problem. That means it’s critical to expose
students to a variety of approaches to solving prob-
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