Good Sensory Learning Blog

Many students struggle with writing and find the required steps both confusing and overwhelming. However, learning the "formula" behind an excellent essay can make the process of writing a relative breeze!  Engage Your Students in the Creative Process: Click This Image to Learn More I often help my students to develop metacognitive skills by asking them to create their own graphic organizers or manuals that can guide them through the sequence of steps required to complete an activity. What's more, when they are apart of the creative process, I find that they are more engaged as well as apt to...

  I know far too well that rote memorization is both boring and frustrating for many young learners.  Over the years, I have also witnessed many students that struggle to learn these foundational skills to resist the process, exhibit anxiety and begin to question their own intelligence.  This is why coming up with a new approach to teaching multiplication facts was one of my first priorities when I opened my educational therapy practice 20 years ago.    Learning the multiplication tables is one of the trickiest endeavours for many elementary students.  Some have great difficulties encoding this material, and I'm...

Do your students or children struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Do they complain that they are fatigued during the school week? Many youngsters are up late doing homework, and as a result, they do not get the needed rest. In fact, recent research suggests that insufficient sleep has been shown to cause poor school performance, cognitive and emotional problems, disciplinary problems, sleepiness in classes, and poor attention skills.  Insufficient Sleep Can Also Lead to: 1. symptoms of depression and anxiety 2. aging of the skin3. serious health problems4. weight gain5. impaired judgement How Much Sleep Do...

Did you know that working memory is often touted to be the best indicator of academic success? However, if a student is easily distracted, the academic content can be missed or it can fade before it even reaches this vital part of the learning process. Attention and Working Memory Go Hand in Hand: Executive functioning, or what I like to call the Grand Central Station of the brain, houses both attention and working memory. In fact, attention and working memory operate in tandem, because attention is required to process and manipulate information in one's mental workspace or mind's eye. This...

Motivation is purported to be a common obstacle that obstructs academic success; however, this is a misconception. As Rick Lavoie said, "It is not that students become unmotivated, because all human behavior is motivated." Instead, other core factors such as depression, anxiety, a poor self-concept, and learning disabilities are the sources that affect learning and appear to impact motivation. Assisting Students that Appear Unmotivated? To help students who appear unmotivated, first, we must investigate the cause of the academic struggle or unwanted behavior. One can attempt to uncover these stumbling blocks through mindful discussions, but it may be best to...