Are you in your right mind?

                             

Before you read any further answer this: Is the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

 Since joining MyBlogLog, I’ve found loads of cool blogs to waste even more of my time reading. I came across this on I will change your life it is totally fascinating. Apparantly, by looking at the image of the dancer turning, you can tell if you are left/right brain dominant. Left brainers will see the dancer turn anti-clockwise and right brainers will see her turn clockwise. According to the theory of laterelisation of brain function, left brainers are more logical, numbers people, whereas right brainers are more creative. For me that dancer is turning clockwise, for once I’m in my right mind

I don’t believe this! I just took another peek and she’s turning the other way! Now she’s changed back again. It’s weird as I just spent five minutes staring at that image and that dancer turned clockwise the whole time. Maybe there is a little logic in my brain after all?

Which is your dominant hemisphere? 

Lateralisation of brain function also affects which is your dominant hand (left hand dominant= right brain dominant and right hand dominant = left brain dominant, just to confuse matters). However it doesn’t always follow that your dominant brain side will reflect your dominant hand. I appear to be one of the exceptions that proves the rule as I am right handed.

Even in this day and age, we know stunningly little about the brain, how it works and how we learn. I don’t know if that scares me or inspires me to try and discover new things, as there are more answers out there.

The Holistic Brain and Learning

There is an emphasis on Whole Brain Thinking, which is using both hemispheres for maximum brain power in current educational thinking. Brain gym has been popular in primary schools here in Britain over the last few years, but is not without its detractors due to some of the claims made about improving cognitive ability by doing exercises like patting your head and rubbing your tummy.  I have used Brain Gym while teaching as an inbetween activity and the students found the change of tempo refreshing. It could also be that a five minute break from French Grammar was so welcome that they would have crawled round on the ground and barked like dogs if they thought it would get them out of it. Sometimes a little energiser is no bad thing. I’m not sure if it improves one’s ability to conjugate the imperfect tense though.

Dore  is an organisation which uses whole brain activites to help children with dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD with great results. I’m not on comission from them, but a colleague of mine has a son who is undergoing the dyspraxia programme, as she says he’s making really good progress.

The wonder of learning

I’m following the baby signing adventures of Half Pint Pixie and her little one with interest. We begin life as receptive creatures, taking everything in. How can we keep that sense of wonder, that thirst to learn new things?  If you have ever learnt another language you will know that you get to a stage where you can understand far more that you can say, and it is as frustrating as hell. This is when lots of people give up thinking that they will never move on to being able to say what they want. In fact, when you get to this stage it is a great sign. You have reached the pain barrier, and you can either stick it out until you break through the other side or just give up.

But before you give up, consider this.

It is amazing that there is so much potential in the world, not “out there” but “in here” if only we knew more about how to harness it. Every human achievement started out as an idea, a thought, and a belief in that idea. Without self-belief we won’t get anywhere. If only we were more aware of the power within us and believed in it.