S.M.A.R.T. Boost Up Training

Each school day at 1:20 p.m. you will find my class in the gym walking on balance beams, doing pencils rolls, jumping rope, working their way across monkey bars and doing many other physical activities.

If you guessed we're in gym class at that time, you were mistaken. It's a class called S.M.A.R.T. Boost Up and my students are working to mature their brains through physical activity to get better at reading and math.

My school began using the S.M.A.R.T. program several years ago after two of our teachers attended a four-day workshop put on by "A Chance To Grow, Inc.". They returned enthused about activities they'd learned which would help our students become ready to read and learn.

ACTG's research showed that doing 80 hours of gross and fine motor, visual acuity and balance/vestibular exercises helped children make an average gain of six months in the reading area.

The "A Chance to Grow" company was developed in the mid-1980s in Minneapolis by Bob and Kathy DeBoer and Art Sander, a physical therapist, as a therapy to use with children who had suffered brain injuries. The activities help children essentially "rewire" their brains to facilitate learning. Later Dr. Lyelle Palmer, a special ed professor from Winoma State University in Minnesota, joined forces with ACTG to devise the S.M.A.R.T. (Stimulating Maturity through Accelerated Readiness) program which would help children who had difficulties learning for any reason.

Later, our school hosted a four-day summer workshop so that a large number of our building's teachers and aides could learn how to run the S.M.A.R.T. boost up program for our students.

It was not without some resistance that the program began at our school. We questioned the wisdom in taking time out of our already busy days for boost up. In time, we began to see benefits of doing these physical activities with our students.

Now it is part of the daily schedules for a majority of the students in our buildings. Most of our students look forward to their boost up time and take pride in their growing physical strength and coordination.

Below are examples of S.M.A.R.T. boost up activities the children do:

Balance and vestibular activities include helicopter spins (spinning to music while staying in one place), walking forward and backward on balance beams, jumping on a rebounder (mini-trampoline), forward rolls, and hop scotch.

Gross motor activities include overhead ladder (monkey bars), alligator crawl, cross pattern walking (lifting one knee while walking and touching that knee with the opposite hand and repeat with other knee and continue alternating) and bilateral jumping jacks.

Fine motor activities include chalkboard circles, rainbow tracing, clothes pin clipping, buttoning buttons, opening and closing zippers and snaps, and lacing shoes.

There are also auditory and visual components to the program, but I am only addressing the physical components of this therapy in this article.

Perhaps you've noticed that many of these activities are things that you remember doing in your childhood. Unfortunately, babies spend a lot more time in car seats, playpens,and exersaucers and get less tummy time than they did in the past. Children are involved in more structured sports activities rather than climbing on monkey bars, swinging on swings, and jumping rope.

To help your elementary school or younger child get ready to learn: give babies lots of tummy time to roll and lift their heads, feet and arms; toddlers, preschoolers and primary grade students should experience swings, merry-go-rounds, monkey bars, jump ropes, pogo sticks, gymnastics, crawling/creeping, crab walk, hanging upside down by their knees (inversion), hop scotch and balancing activities.

Sources:

http://www.themlrc.org/about/about_history.htm

http://www.actg.org/