The Importance of Brain Fitness in Education
Just as exercise of the body promotes physical fitness, so does the proper exercise of the mind promote brain fitness. The latest neuroscience confirms that the brain can reinvent and reconfigure itself throughout life and not just during the formative years. With frequent, proven brain fitness exercises every learner can become a successful lifelong learner.
What is Brain Fitness?
Just as exercise promotes physical fitness, exercising our brain improves brain fitness in four critical areas:
- Memory
- Attention
- Processing
- Sequencing
Exercises that work these cognitive "muscles" provide valuable benefits to learners:
- Accelerated acquisition of knowledge
- Better ability to utilize and organize information to which they have already been exposed
- Readiness to embark upon an improved trajectory of lifelong learning
Together, brain fitness activities and good instructional practices create an optimal learning environment where students can reach their full potential.
Brain Fitness & Optimal Learning
In our national effort to accelerate learning for all students, conversations have focused primarily upon two points:
- Curriculum standards
- Strategies for individualizing instruction to give learners optimal and repeated exposure to content they haven’t mastered
While these objectives are critically important, they do not directly address the needs of many struggling students:
- Learners who have difficulty paying attention to instruction
- Learners who have difficulty remembering what they are taught
They also do not address the cognitive challenge faced by nearly every learner from English language learners to learners at grade level and above:
- The inability to process information in one or more subject areas as quickly as it is being presented.
The loss of confidence that follows these difficulties can negatively impact motivation and harm overall academic performance.
Scientific Learning – A Pioneer in Brain Fitness and Education
Scientific Learning strengthens brain processing and builds academic skills for all learners in grades pre-K to post-secondary. Scientific Learning’s family of products has positively impacted the lives of over 2 million learners worldwide. Our flagship Fast ForWord® reading intervention programs can help learners achieve a 1-2 year reading gain in as little time as 8 to 12 weeks.
The Fast ForWord reading intervention programs trace their origins to the brain plasticity research of Scientific Learning’s founding scientists, Drs. Michael Merzenich and William Jenkins (University of California, San Francisco), and the language and reading research of Drs. Paula Tallal and Steven Miller (Rutgers University). Collectively, these four neuroscientists and cognitive researchers are responsible for the company’s portfolio of 80+ patents in neuroscience and education.
More than 200 studies have been conducted on the efficacy of our products, including scientifically based research and independent Fast ForWord reviews that meet the highest standards of research as defined by the What Works Clearinghouse within the U.S. Department of Education. Overall, these various evaluations have clearly indicated that combining brain fitness exercises with a strong, standards-based curriculum can yield dramatic and enduring improvements in academic achievement. Full research reports show improved test scores using our products with all learners.
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