Movement, Relaxation and Yoga in the Classroom
Experience how a variety of movement activities can
help enhance learning, classroom cohesiveness and the
overall performance for many of your students. Come and
explore the bodily/kinesthetic intelligence that can
help these learners with comprehension, mastery through
hands on activities as well as finding new ways
incorporating motor activities into learning. Learn
stress busting and relaxation exercises that allow your
students to experience less anxiety, more control and
improved coping ability. Take away strategies, movement
patterns and yoga postures to use in your classroom on a
daily basis to enhance the kinesthetic intelligence of
your teaching.
Accommodating for Children with Attention Deficit
Disorder (from an Occupational Therapist’s perspective…)
Do you have children in the classroom who are
excitable, impulsive, restless, easily frustrated,
daydreamers or even those you might say are lazy? Those
children that have been diagnosed with this disorder can
exhibit these and other symptoms that interfere with
accessing their curriculum. They often display a
developmental disability for executive abilities.
Organizational skills, transitions, immaturity and other
symptoms often warrant behavior management techniques or
other strategies to help the child feel successful. Take
away ideas for specific ways to enhance direction
following, promote social skills and executive skills.
Empower these children with the ability to learn and
live with the challenges that their diagnosis brings to
the classroom.
Enhancing Education for Borderline Students Response to
Intervention (RtI) ideas
More and more classrooms have “at risk students”.
Changes in IDEIA are promoting identification,
intervention and measurement continuums to monitor
progress and growth based on intervention. RIT generally
looks at literacy, based on research based teaching
strategies. What about the students who are missing
foundation skills in gross, fine, sensory and visual
motor integration? These skills are the building blocks
to achieving success in reading, writing and sequencing.
Without these developmentally researched skills children
may have problems with crossing midline, maintaining a
prolonged sitting posture, handwriting production,
reading with fluency, tracking, and remembering facts
for comprehension. Let’s look at whole group initiatives
that include differentiated instruction, inclusive
opportunities for boosting academic and emotional
performance. Gain a perspective of how to work smarter
versus harder to prevent school failure.
Just Breathe, Promoting Literacy by Using Yoga,
Relaxation, Visualization and Movement
Come for an innovative, multiple intelligences based
experience to enhance comprehension, participation and
story sequencing for your elementary aged children. This
participative workshop will demonstrate kinesthetic,
visualization and relaxation responses that will promote
not only a calmer classroom but tap into innovative
learning strategies that include a variety of learners.
Learn and apply some simple 1-2 minute techniques to
reduce anxiety, quiet and calm your class to optimize
learning.
Just Breathe!
As an educator you hit the ground running from the
moment you get to school until you finish correcting
papers in the evening. You deserve a break today. Come
and experience a little bit of stress busting, a little
bit of yoga and a little bit of relaxation, with it all
adding up to some timely tips for you to apply to your
busy days. Learn some techniques to release tension
throughout your day, with or without your students.
Experience the relaxation response which will give you
the necessary energy to do the job you love to do.
Integration of Differentiated Learning for Fine, Visual
Perceptual, Executive and Sensory Skills
Differentiated learning is one of the challenges of
inclusion. Larger classes, with diverse needs often call
for new ideas and perceptions to be successful.
Sometimes you may ask yourself “what am I doing right in
my teaching?” You may be doing more than you realize. In
this workshop you will look through an Occupational
Therapist’s eye at the classroom’s daily routines,
curriculum and environmental set-up. From these
perspectives we will explore ways of improving
differentiated learning by incorporating executive
skills, fine motor skills and alerting activities in the
day-to-day routine. Take away ideas that you can use
tomorrow to make your inclusive classroom all that it
can be.
Do You See What I See?
Let’s look at visual perceptual skills. Not your
students acuity, but rather their visual ability in the
areas of figure ground, visual spatial, visual memory,
visual sequential memory, visual discrimination, form
constancy and visual closure. These skills can
contribute to one’s ability to read, write, work
independently and remember visual information to use for
all kinds of tasks. Come and learn through an
Occupational Therapist’s eyes and then apply a new
perspective to response to intervention practice.
Nimble Fingers, Strong Hands…
Pincer grip, tripod, thumb overlap, raking, in hand
manipulation, lateral pinch…lots of odd words with a
mighty impact on your students fine motor skills. Come
and learn through an Occupational Therapist’s eyes how
to refine prehension skills. By improving the student’s
hand strength and dexterity, you will find great
improvement in handwriting, manipulation ability as well
as daily living skills. Take away tricks of the trade to
help kids be successful.
Gross Motor Foundation Skills…Translated into the
Classroom
Do you have kids falling out of their seats,
standing up to write, can’t sit in circle for more than
5 minutes, are challenged to move about the classroom
without knocking something or someone over? Come and
understand the importance of gross motor strength,
balance and coordination through an Occupational
Therapist’s eyes. By gaining a better understanding of
how improvement of these skills can help your kiddos
work longer, and stronger, you will increase their
concentration and access to the curriculum.
Juggling the Job of the School Based Therapist
Why did you get into school based therapy to begin
with? This course is to help Therapists work smarter,
not harder within the context of school system delivery.
Whether or not you are providing consultative or direct
therapy, this course is for you. Participants will
explore Response to Intervention, IDEIA, NCLB,
inclusion, service delivery and other concepts focusing
on integration of services. Creative consultation, team
service delivery ideas, scheduling and IEP design
suggestions will help you become more efficient, yet
effective in your practice. Do you find yourself
constantly juggling a demanding schedule? We need to
change the way we think about what role we have in the
educational system. Let’s discover educational
initiatives that we can piggy back to create a more
common language with teachers. Come and learn more about
executive skills and how they can be incorporated into
treatment objectives that relate to therapy
interventions. Take away specific ideas of how to ensure
your suggestions take place in the classroom or school
environment when you are not there. A round table format
will be utilized for all participants to share specific
issues, concerns, triumphs and challenges. Discussion of
caseloads, best practice models, school philosophy and
your role as specialist will be incorporated throughout
the seminar. Now is the time to focus on 21st century
therapy in America’s educational system. Consider
attending this seminar if you need a jump start, want to
know what others are doing in your state and to remember
why you go into school system delivery to begin with.
From Med. To Ed., School Based Therapy in the 21st
Century
Let’s finally move from our familiar medical model
to an educational model! This seminar is for you if you
want to expand your skills as a school based therapist.
How do you contribute to the existing curriculum of the
classrooms that your students are involved with? When
you plan for your student, do you take into
consideration the child’s curriculum, state standards
and the classroom expectations? Walk away with a bag of
tricks to treat the kids from Pre-school - high school
on your caseload in or out of the classroom. Learn to
apply the exercises of the Drive Thru Menus for
Stressbusting and Relaxation, helping student gain
strategies for emotional control. By increasing your
knowledge base of what educational initiatives often
exist within the school systems you work in, you will be
better able to haunt the children when you are not
there. Make your interventions relevant and applicable
by gaining skills to better deal with state and school
mandates. Response to Intervention (RTI) tier system,
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory, literacy and
Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS) are just a few of the
initiatives will be discussed. Learn about
differentiated instruction and how to compliment it with
your involvement in a classroom setting. Experience a
creative movement and yoga session to enhance student
involvement and comprehension. A round table format
discussion model will be utilized to encourage
networking, actively problem solving specific caseload
or best practice needs. Whether we are new to school
based therapy or are a veteran, we all need to feel
empowered to gain fresh ideas and new approaches. Feel
free to bring an idea/activity to share that others may
use to enhance their practice.
Empowering Clients to Use Relaxation, Stress Reduction,
Movement and Yoga Techniques to Enhance Performance
For therapists, health professionals, teachers that work
with a variety of diagnosis
Whether your caseload is children, adults with
mental or physical challenges or the elderly, this
course is designed to help empower you and your skill
set as a therapist. Client’s coping skills can vary
according to personality, extenuating circumstances,
environmental factors and other issues that may
influence their abilities. We strive to meet the
treatment needs but hope that the individual will adapt
to their challenges in fulfilling their roles optimally.
How often are we looking at the whole person versus a
reimbursement code for a disability? How can we help
them learn and apply strategies to help with self
regulation, coping day to day and being active
participants in there existing world? Isn’t habituation
really the key? Participants will review techniques and
a variety of methods to improve attention, focus, the
relaxation response and stress busting. Consideration of
sensory processing issues for these populations will be
addressed. An experiential overview of basic yoga poses,
breathing and visualization techniques and their
application to clinical environments will be covered.
Confirm how our client’s sensory systems can benefit
from a variety of sensory input to affect overall
performance and accessing their routine. Recognize when
to teach someone on your caseload how to soothe
themselves, relax, and reduce stress to improve their
ability to fulfill their roles. Let’s bring back the
idea of activity based, client generated interventions
to enhance self preservation, self esteem and problem
solving skills.
The Challenging Child through an Occupational
Therapist’s Eyes, (At School, Home and the Community)
Are you noticing that more and more children in your
practice are requiring behavioral interventions in
conjunction with academically based therapeutic
interventions. With the increase in diagnosis’ of
Aspergers, ADHD, Autism and mental illness, caseloads
for therapists are changing. Are you well equipped and
prepared to deal with daily issues of compliance,
initiative, motivation, confidence and problem solving
that so many of our challenging kids require. The
frequency of co-morbidity of diagnosis’ can increase the
chance of a need for behavioral interventions. As
therapist what is our role in projecting towards the
future to help the individual cope with these diagnosis
for life? Consider activity based interventions for
helping these kid’s access their curriculums. How can
you promote the individual’s participation in their own
program, improve peer interaction and social/emotional
well being? How can you help the teachers differentiate
their teaching strategies to involve these children
successfully? What are the functional behaviors that are
essential for optimal school functioning? Contemplate
our role as facilitators, coaches and the promoters of
functional daily living skills and what we can do to
improve the quality and the performance of these
challenging children.
* Don't
See What Your Institution Needs?
Any
and all of these seminars can be adapted to fit the
organization’s needs. Offerings can be modified for the
audiences of educational staff, parents, therapists etc.
Feel free to contact to discuss tailoring the
presentations to accommodate your specific institution’s
needs.
Coming soon:
an interactive creative movement and yoga book called
Come be a Tree, published by Sensory
Resources and the Drive Thru Body Challenge Cards,
published by Therapro.
