Marshall Independent, Marshall, MN

headline suggestion: S.M.A.R.T. development
subhead suggestion: A program being implemented at Lincoln HI Elementary this year focuses on getting kids’ bodies and brains ready to learn.

By Deb Gau
dgau@marshallindependent.com

HENDRICKS — With all the lights in the room dimmed, first and second grade teacher Barbara Deuel clicked on a lantern and asked her students to read the word written on a flash card she was holding. After the kids chorused, “jump,” Deuel clicked the lantern off for a moment while she changed cards, and back on again.
Click.
“Color.”
Click.
“Funny.”
It looked like a vocabulary game, but it was really exercise for students’ reflexes, as the pupils of their eyes dilated and contracted with the light. Learning takes strong eyes, explained physical education teacher Hope Doom — along with good hearing, muscle coordination and much more.
“There are a few activities they do every day,” said Doom, who like Deuel teaches at Lincoln Hendricks-Ivanhoe Elementary School in Hendricks. “They all crawl, and they all do the ‘creep track.’ There are also a lot of different things they do for reflexes, visual tracking, cross-body activities.”
The exercises the first graders were doing are part of a program that Lincoln HI Elementary is implementing for its youngest students this year. Called S.M.A.R.T., or Stimulating Maturity through Accelerated Readiness Training, the program focuses on developing the brains and bodies of kindergarteners, first and second graders.
“I believe the key to learning is movement. Once you add movement, it really sticks,” said Doom, who is Lincoln HI Elementary’s lead teacher for the S.M.A.R.T. program. “The whole idea (of the program) is to see long-term academic improvement.”
Every day, students get some time in the school’s S.M.A.R.T. room, located on a portion of the stage in the school gymnasium. The kids rotate through activities like bouncing on trampolines, swinging across monkey bars or crawling alligator-style across a mat. In addition, teachers use activities in the classroom and meet with a mentor from the Minnesota Learning Resource Center.
Although S.M.A.R.T. began receiving Minnesota state funding in 1999, the program rests on 20 years of research on children’s physical development, said Cindy Harvey, S.M.A.R.T. mentor for Lincoln HI Elementary. S.M.A.R.T. programs have been implemented at hundreds of schools in 12 states around the country.
There are many reasons why developmental programs like S.M.A.R.T. are beneficial to kids, Doom and Harvey said. One reason is that the way children grow up is changing in our society.
“Kids’ bodies and eyes aren’t getting as much free play as they did in the past. A lot of their time is spent looking at screens of one kind or another,” Harvey said. “Infants and toddlers are also spending more time in ‘child containers’ — things like car seats and walkers — and aren’t getting enough time for crawling and creeping.”
Harvey said physical activities like crawling help stimulate and develop parts of the brain involved with reflexes and motor control. That in turn frees up the cortex, the part of the brain controlling conscious thought, for learning.
For example, she said, “If you have a vision problem and you need to use your cortex to keep your eyes steady, you’re going to have a hard time trying to read.”
S.M.A.R.T. activities also help create connections between different parts of the brain, Doom said, which makes it easier for kids to think and remember what they’ve learned.
Harvey said working with the teachers at Lincoln HI Elementary has been a positive experience.
“The Hendricks staff is excellent,” she said. “The teachers there are very eager for feeback and willing to let me into their classrooms. Not all schools do that.”
Doom said the program has also received a lot of support from the community. The local Kiwanis chapter is helping to fund some of this year’s teacher training and mentor visits, Doom said.
The kids at Lincoln HI might not understand all the details of brain development, but the activities are fun. Teachers said they’ve seen students’ coordination improve as a result of the exercises, and the activities are a good way for kids to channel their energy and stay focused.
“They love it,” Deuel said.
“It’s really fun to watch the kids do helicopter spins,” Doom said of one exercise, where kids twirl in place for a few seconds. “You can see afterward how they’re just fired up and ready to go.”