It's unfortunate but true, and probably due to our tech-driven, scientifically orientated world, that when I tell people I write poetry for a living, I'm likely to hear the question, "But what's it for? What does it do?" And that's a puzzler when it comes to literature and poetry. To those of us who love it, it's perfectly obvious what it's "for."
Left-brain teaching is linear. Lists to learn and memorize. Teachers talk. Kids write it down. Teachers have a plan. Kids follow the plan. Whoa there. You've just lost all those right-brain kids. Now they get poor grades. They're labeled with a learning disability. Maybe they get in trouble. Probably somebody thinks they have ADHD.
Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..
You are not dead until your brain is dead. Your brain needs two things to survive: fuel and activation. Fuel comes in the form of oxygen and glucose. Glucose comes from the food you eat, and oxygen comes from the air you breathe. The normal inspiration/expiration ratio should be exhalation twice as long as inhalation. That is to say - breathe out twice as long as you breathe in.
Our memories, our verbal skills and our understanding of meaning are spread through different areas of our brains, a complex network that we draw on without even - well - thinking! And this is where poetry finds a remarkable niche. Why do children memorize far more easily when they are given information in rhyme? Why do YOU still remember songs and poems that you learned when you were small? You probably even still use some of those mnemonics, and you're definitely passing them on to your own children, helping them to learn nursery rhymes and the letters of the alphabet that way.
Get kids doing Brain Gym's cross crawl. It's like marching in place. You can do it sitting or standing. Raise your right leg and touch your knee with your left elbow. Now left leg up and touch with right elbow. How many variations on this can you and your kids invent. Be sure to use music. Makes it more fun. How slowly can you do it? Slowly gives you more brain integration and better balance.
It would seem that our brains have been programmed for this kind of thinking since before anyone even thought of writing anything down. After all, how are you going to pass down the tribe's history to the next generation, unless you turn it into an epic song or poem that people can remember, one verse at a time? Entire moral codes and genealogies were passed on in this manner until came up with the written word, and though we can now access all kinds of words on the internet with a flick of a mouse button, our brains still crave the stimulus that poetry gives, especially when it's spoken out loud.
Visual stimulation from the left side in a checkerboard pattern using different colors comes up through the optic pathway to the brain stem and up to the right brain. The T.E.N.S. unit set at subthreshold stimulates large diameter nerves which fire up to the cerebellum and to the opposite brain.
Left-brain teaching is linear. Lists to learn and memorize. Teachers talk. Kids write it down. Teachers have a plan. Kids follow the plan. Whoa there. You've just lost all those right-brain kids. Now they get poor grades. They're labeled with a learning disability. Maybe they get in trouble. Probably somebody thinks they have ADHD.
Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..
You are not dead until your brain is dead. Your brain needs two things to survive: fuel and activation. Fuel comes in the form of oxygen and glucose. Glucose comes from the food you eat, and oxygen comes from the air you breathe. The normal inspiration/expiration ratio should be exhalation twice as long as inhalation. That is to say - breathe out twice as long as you breathe in.
Our memories, our verbal skills and our understanding of meaning are spread through different areas of our brains, a complex network that we draw on without even - well - thinking! And this is where poetry finds a remarkable niche. Why do children memorize far more easily when they are given information in rhyme? Why do YOU still remember songs and poems that you learned when you were small? You probably even still use some of those mnemonics, and you're definitely passing them on to your own children, helping them to learn nursery rhymes and the letters of the alphabet that way.
Get kids doing Brain Gym's cross crawl. It's like marching in place. You can do it sitting or standing. Raise your right leg and touch your knee with your left elbow. Now left leg up and touch with right elbow. How many variations on this can you and your kids invent. Be sure to use music. Makes it more fun. How slowly can you do it? Slowly gives you more brain integration and better balance.
It would seem that our brains have been programmed for this kind of thinking since before anyone even thought of writing anything down. After all, how are you going to pass down the tribe's history to the next generation, unless you turn it into an epic song or poem that people can remember, one verse at a time? Entire moral codes and genealogies were passed on in this manner until came up with the written word, and though we can now access all kinds of words on the internet with a flick of a mouse button, our brains still crave the stimulus that poetry gives, especially when it's spoken out loud.
Visual stimulation from the left side in a checkerboard pattern using different colors comes up through the optic pathway to the brain stem and up to the right brain. The T.E.N.S. unit set at subthreshold stimulates large diameter nerves which fire up to the cerebellum and to the opposite brain.
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