Thursday, October 31, 2013

Right Brain, Left Brain

By Lisa R. Neumann


Some kids are right-brain dominant. They're creative. They think out of the box. They dance and do art. They usually don't like math.Other kids are left-brain dominant. They take things apart to figure out how they work. They like order. They think about things and ask lots of questions. Math is often their favorite subject.Nothing wrong with this, except that school is generally a left-brain dominant institution, especially as kids progress on to high school and then college. Although we're getting better at teaching to individual differences in grade school, left-brain teaching remains the norm in high school.

But just in case you're asked that question about poetry any time soon, and you want to have something to say without spluttering in indignation, I thought I'd throw together a few little-know facts about the effect poetry has on children's brains (and ours, for that matter).

Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..

You are not dead until your brain is dead. Your brain needs two things to survive: fuel and activation. Fuel comes in the form of oxygen and glucose. Glucose comes from the food you eat, and oxygen comes from the air you breathe. The normal inspiration/expiration ratio should be exhalation twice as long as inhalation. That is to say - breathe out twice as long as you breathe in.

Our memories, our verbal skills and our understanding of meaning are spread through different areas of our brains, a complex network that we draw on without even - well - thinking! And this is where poetry finds a remarkable niche. Why do children memorize far more easily when they are given information in rhyme? Why do YOU still remember songs and poems that you learned when you were small? You probably even still use some of those mnemonics, and you're definitely passing them on to your own children, helping them to learn nursery rhymes and the letters of the alphabet that way.

Get kids doing Brain Gym's cross crawl. It's like marching in place. You can do it sitting or standing. Raise your right leg and touch your knee with your left elbow. Now left leg up and touch with right elbow. How many variations on this can you and your kids invent. Be sure to use music. Makes it more fun. How slowly can you do it? Slowly gives you more brain integration and better balance.

It would seem that our brains have been programmed for this kind of thinking since before anyone even thought of writing anything down. After all, how are you going to pass down the tribe's history to the next generation, unless you turn it into an epic song or poem that people can remember, one verse at a time? Entire moral codes and genealogies were passed on in this manner until came up with the written word, and though we can now access all kinds of words on the internet with a flick of a mouse button, our brains still crave the stimulus that poetry gives, especially when it's spoken out loud.

Roger W. Sperry, an American psycho biologist, discovered and developed the concept of two brains - left brain and right brain theory. He successfully explained and proved people functioning of brain. It was found out that human brain has two different ways of thinking because of two unlike brain. The right side of the brain concentrates more on visual and images while, the left side of the brain deals with the verbal power. In more simple words, people thinking from left side of the bran are more logistical, objective, and methodical. While, the right brained people are more creative, subjective, and thoughtful.




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