January 2002

Welcome to the Alite newsletter, January 2002

We hope that you, like us, are looking forward to another exciting year of learning and teaching. We are particularly excited about our forthcoming conference, Motivation and Learning, and hope we will see you there. Details below!

In this month's newsletter we have information on literacy and the brain, emotional stress, foetal brain development, and some practical tips on target-setting. As always, we would be delighted to hear from you if you would like to contribute an accelerated learning tip to the newsletter.

Happy New Year!

Reading problems

In the UK about 5% of children have difficulty learning to speak and about 20% of children have difficulty learning to read. Both require acquisition of phonological skills which depends on sensitive auditory perception of frequency and amplitude changes in speech sounds. Girls and boys appear to differ in the way language is acquired and developed. Girls usually say their first words and learn to speak in sentences earlier than boys. Some studies have found that women speak in longer, more complex sentences than men. Also, boys outnumber girls in remedial reading classes. Stuttering and other speech defects occur more frequently among males.

The brain is not designed to be literate - that is a socially constructed phenomenon - but it is designed for language. Becoming literate does, however, have consequences for the structure of the brain. If I was to give two pieces of advice to a parent the first would be to monitor your child's health and the second would be to talk to, with and around your child frequently and positively. There is a saying which says 'you build your house and then you live in it'. This could be true of the brain. If it is possible to re-wire a brain, and I think it is, then the early acquisition of language has to be the most potent force for doing so. Television, video and computers do not make good baby sitters.

Faster than a speeding bullet

During every minute of the nine months of pregnancy the brain gains another quarter of a million brain cells. The brain is genetically hard-wired to produce a staggering total of around 100 billion neurons and a trillion glial cells which provide all the necessary support and protection. This will lead to a multi-trillion network of connections capable of performing 20 million billion calculations per second cells communicate with each chemically and electrically and the charge speeds down the axon at 250 miles per hour. At birth the architecture for supporting vital functions like seeing, hearing, breathing, touching, smelling and tasting is largely in place. The potential for executing those second by second decisions is there.

Stay away from the medicine man

In 1942 a classic study of voodoo death showed that tribesmen died within hours of being cursed by a medicine man. Studies with animals show that emotional stress can reduce the threshold for ventricular fibrillation. It can give you a heart attack. Brain mechanisms regulating emotion can play a significant part in inducing sudden death. A very good friend of mine had a family member who, after a lifetime of working in the local mill in a management position, was told that his services were no longer required. Due to a decline in business he and others were being made redundant. It was Friday morning. That afternoon he died at home of a heart attack. Of the 300,000 deaths through cardiac arrest annually in the US it is estimated that in 20% of cases emotion plays a significant role.

The brain heart laterality hypothesis (BHL) suggests that the degree to which emotion is regulated by the left hemisphere rather than the norm which is the right hemisphere, correlates to vulnerability to sudden death. In an explanation of why emotion may be lateralised to the right hemisphere of your brain it has been argued that it is in part to do with natural selection. Natural selection confers greater survival value on those who can maximise cardiac output in survival situations. At the same time brain asymmetry conferred greater cognitive abilities. What natural selection did not anticipate was the impact of diseases associated with unrelieved stress or with elongated survival - most sudden heart attack deaths occur in middle age - and so we have a brain that is lateralised for both emotional and intellectual demands. In circumstances when the lateralisation is irregular, you are correspondingly more vulnerable to unforeseen change.

Tip for the month - target setting

We are frequently asked how to make target setting easier and more effective. Horsenden School in West London has applied Accelerated Learning techniques to target setting with great success. You can read more about their approach on the website at www.alite.co.uk.

On the specific subject of ways to record and display target cards, Horsenden School have the following tips:

• Laminate the targets
• Have standardised laminates and individualised with the child's name
• Have class, group and individual targets
• Put a numeracy target and a literacy target on each side of the card
• Suspend them on thread above the desks
• Write them as postcards to yourself
• Write targets as circus or concert type posters announcing when the target will be met and by whom
• Celebrate noisily and with movement when someone hits their target
• Have a target setters wall and display them there
• Build up the target cards on the wall to see if collectively you can reach certain target heights or marks by the end of the week, term or year

Each month we will be featuring a practical tip from an accelerated learning school. If you would like to contribute a tip, please send an email to heather@alite.co.uk. We would be delighted to credit your school with the tip if you wish.

Motivation and Learning

A date for your diary! The Alite Motivation and Learning Conference will take place on 21 June 2002 at the Café Royal, London. This is a challenging, interactive 1 day programme designed to bring to life the theory of motivation. The day will be headed up by Alistair Smith, and will be packed with practical tools and techniques for keeping students motivated. Delegates are sure to leave the Conference feeling highly motivated themselves!

To receive a booking form for the Conference, please email Kim Pemberton at kim@alite.co.uk, or click here