Brain-based curriculum engaging students

By Tanner Kent

LE CENTER — There’s a classroom epidemic spreading across southern Minnesota.

From Waseca to Cleveland, from St. Peter to Le Center, a new and invasive strand of brain-based learning is arriving in schools. Symptoms include running, jumping, crawling and creeping. And the long-term consequences, educators say, could have significant impacts on brain development, language acquisition and academic achievement.

It’s called SMART and is an acronym for Stimulating Maturity Through Accelerated Readiness Training. The curriculum is designed for elementary-age students and, essentially, uses physical movements to stimulate certain parts of the brain to enhance learning. The curriculum centers on weekly, and sometimes daily, 30-minute sessions inside a SMART classroom (think indoor playground) but is also used as a short classroom break to give students a way to burn energy and remain focused.

“The kids have been very receptive,” said Deb Dwyer, principal of Le Center Elementary, which was one of the first schools in the area to embrace SMART about four years ago.

“We’ve noticed great improvement in a lot of areas.”

And that improvement, Dwyer said, may even be showing up on recent standardized test scores.

During the latest round of MCA-II results, Le Center third-graders were 100 percent proficient on math. In recent memory, no other public school in the area has achieved 100 percent proficiency in either reading or math.

Dwyer said the success is due to a combination of factors, but she’s confident SMART played a significant role. All of Le Center’s K-2 teachers as well as its physical education instructors and some paraprofessionals have been trained in the curriculum. The school is continually improving its own, specially built SMART classroom and the school schedules 30-minute SMART sessions for each of its kindergarten and first-grade classrooms.

“We’ll give the kids a little SMART boost, and they are ready for learning,” Dwyer said. “We’ve really found it to be a great tool.”

Many other area school districts are arriving at the same conclusion.

Le Sueur-Henderson and St. Peter have used the curriculum with elementary students for several years. In Waseca, Hartley Elementary built a SMART classroom last year and had several teachers trained in the curriculum during the summer. And in Mankato, Kennedy Elementary recently completed its SMART room in time for the school year.

Cleveland built its SMART room last year and has had eight staff members complete the training. Kim Germscheid, a first-grade teacher, said the school utilizes all the standard SMART equipment — overhead ladders, balance beams and so-called creep tracks where students process language cues while crawling, to name a few — but she also has worked SMART exercises into her daily classroom routine.

“My kids love it,” Germscheid said. “It will be interesting to see how much it benefits these kids because now they’ve had SMART for a year and are familiar with the movements.”

Staff development and workshop opportunities for SMART are offered by the Minnesota Learning Resource Center. The center’s mission is to train schools in innovative curriculum practices.