Activate in the Classroom, Age Levels 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 by Val Sabin:
- Increases physical fluency, agility, balance and co-ordination.
- Whole class, age levelled, progressive exercise programmes.
- Develops attention, concentration and listening skills.
- Develops self-awareness, self-confidence and self-esteem.
- 75 minutes weekly builds stamina and strength and fights obesity.
- Develops various academic personal, social and behavioural competencies.
Introduction to Activate in the Classroom
“Activate in the Classroom” was created and designed by Val Sabin to be easy to use, age specific, inclusive, progressively staged, repeated patterns of movement with music programmes. The activities are designed to help pupils become more agile, better balanced, better coordinated, better controlled and more precise in their movements. Pupils improve their listening attention and concentration capabilities as their neurological systems also become better, fitter and faster.
These age level physical fluency programmes are also designed to improve the development and efficiency of pupils’ cerebellar-vestibular systems. This is because of clinical practice and research findings that link a wide variety of dyslexic, dyspraxic, ADHD, Aspergic and various learning dysfunction symptoms to neurological developmental delay. All pupils in school Activate classes are improving in most aspects of their physical fluency and many other benefits are being reported.
Activate 5 – Nursery and Reception classes (4 – 5 years)
Activate 7 – Years 1 and 2 (6 – 7 years)
Activate 9 – Years 3 and 4 (8 – 9 years)
Activate 11 – Years 5 and 6 (10 – 11 years)
Activate 13 – Years 7 and 8 (11 – 12 years)
The Activate In The Classroom Teaching Manuals
Each Activate manual describes in words and shows in figure-diagram forms precisely how each activity needs to be executed for the pupils to fully benefit. This allows the teacher to be able to stand in front of the class and lead the exercises. Alternatively, the DVDs also show each morning and afternoon session with movements being performed to the music thus allowing the class to proceed by watching the DVD. Alternatively, some teachers allow various pupils to lead the class in the Activate movements. A simple ten-point physical fluency checklist for visual assessment is now included.
The Activate exercises are particularly designed to improve various elements of physical fluency, stimulate the cerebellar-vestibular systems and intensively exercise the neural connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
The core activity, progression and extension exercises provide a very comprehensive upper and lower body gross-motor exercise range. Also included are fine motor exercises, balance moves, hand-eye co-ordination moves, eye exercises and speech patterns, all to sound rhythms.
Easy to observe and evaluate benefits:
- Children find Activate fun to do.
- There is 75 minutes per week of extra High Quality Physical Activity.
- Children increase their fitness and stamina.
- Children improve their posture and core strength.
- Children improve many other physical fluency elements such as:- agility, balance, co-ordination, precision and control of movement, flexibility and rhythm.
Often reported benefits:
- Reported to improve concentration focus, attention spans and ability to listen.
- Reported to increase self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem.
- Many reported improvements in various personal, social, emotional, academic and behavioural capabilities.
Designed into the programmes benefits:
- Increases/enlarges children’s banks of physically fluent and automatised movements which can then be utilized unconsciously and automatically in many sports, activity and everyday situations.
- Extends the sometimes limited movement capability governed by the basal dominances of an individual.
- Helps to further suppress certain primitive reflexes that may not be inhibited enough and which if still in evidence can hinder motor control, eye functioning, hand-eye co-ordination, perceptual skills and other functions throughout life.
Other beneficial applications and outcomes:
- The Activate patterns of movement are being used in some individual cases to ease the conditions of dyspraxia, dyslexia, attention disorders, aspergism and related learning and behavioural disorders.
- Several schools report that over a period of time the Activate exercises have been instrumental in reducing the weight of most overweight children at their schools.