S.M.A.R.T. Room COMPLETE!

This past week, Grainwood installed the final piece to its S.M.A.R.T. Classroom. S.M.A.R.T., which stands for Stimulating Maturity through Accelerated Readiness Training, is a multisensory approach to learning based on brain research.  This program develops physiological and neurological readinesss skills essential to classroom success in the areas of language development, reading, math, writing, physiological readiness and coordination, and attention. Its purpose is to stimulate the brain stem activity of elementary students through physical movement or activity in order to increase the number of neural connections and accelerate academic learning. 

The S.M.A.R.T. program is presently implemented for students through 25 minute sessions once a day with supervision through Grainwood trained S.M.A.R.T. staff.  The basic components include 10 repetitions of an obstacle course which includes 10-12 activity stations.  The activities focus on cross lateral, balance, visual, phonemic awareness, and fine motor skills.  These skills are taught through a variety of crawling and creeping activities, walking on a balance beam, jumping on a mini-tramp, eye-teaming, focusing, sound blending, eye-hand tracing, numerous other specific activities and FINALLY overhead crawling. The overhead ladder is an essential component and the primary eye teaming activity to be used daily with students to further develop the readiness skills necessary for reading.

We have been utilizing S.M.A.R.T. with our special needs students and a classroom of Kindergarten and 1st Grade students all year. This summer, five other Grainwood Staff will be trained in S.M.A.R.T., including all other kindergarten and 1st Grade teachers. 

We especially want to thank the Grainwood PTC and the Prior Lake-Savage Area Educational Foundation for their financial support towards purchasing the overhead ladder.  Please check out this video of S.M.A.R.T., as seen on KARE 11 News, for an example of a S.M.A.R.T. Classroom in action.

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=868166