Featured Article: Bal-A-Vis-X
3-6-2009
Learning is experience. Everything else
is just information. - Albert Einstein
If you came to the last All School Meeting in February,
you got a chance to experience first hand the excitement
of learning some Bal-A-Vis-X exercises. Many of Desert
Star's faculty went to Flagstaff in February to learn
this wonderful series of Balance/Auditory/Vision exercises
of varied complexity, most of which are deeply rooted
in rhythm. These exercises require full-body coordination
and focused attention. Read on for excerpts from a new
study conducted at an elementary school in Michigan.
If you missed the All School Meeting, come after school
for another opportunity to experience Bal-A-Vis first
hand with Catherine Weld, after school Tuesday April 7th!
The Effects of Bal-A-Vis-X on Student Achievement, Test
Scores, and Social Behavior For Students in Grades 1,
3, & 5 at Douglas Elementary School, Saugatuck Public
Schools, Douglas, Michigan, June 2008:
Bal-A-Vis-X,
originated by Wichita teacher Bill Hubert, encompasses
many of the components that have been beneficial in helping
students develop brain-body integration which proves to
be so necessary in learning. This program is a series
of Balance, Auditory, and Vision eXercises. These activities
have varied levels of complexity, which revolve around
rhythm and require complete body coordination and focused
attention.This series of exercises focuses on balance,
auditory and visual teaming, and patterning. Mr. Hubert
states in his book Resonance, that the use of the Bal-A-Vis-X
program will help learning disabled students improve cognitive
integration, help behaviorally disordered students "settle"
their behavior, and help attention deficit and hyperactive
students show decreases in impulsivity and increase attention
span.
He also asserts that at-grade-level students will achieve
more academic success with less effort and that gifted
students will improve physical coordination and experience
less stress headaches.
It is believed that although each child takes a unique
path on the journey to learning, physical movement is
essential to ALL learning. Through movement ALL are able
to restore their integrated state of being. Hence, learners
are more capable of receiving and processing the new information.
The opportunity to study the effects of movement in learning
and development in the classroom allowed researchers to
begin to pull together the threads that form the fabric
of beliefs that movement is essential to learning, that
motor development is a life-long process, and that all
ages benefit from movement.
Findings and Recommendations
The implementation of Bal-A-Vis-X at Douglas Elementary
School by classroom teachers with their students has proven
to raise academic achievement and improve social behavior.
While both the study and control groups at each grade
level showed progress during the academic year, the study
groups recorded marks indicating greater increase in one
or more areas than the control groups. Many individuals
in the study group displayed improvements in their personal
affect in regard to attitude toward schoolwork, interacting
with peers, and self-esteem. One can substantiate from
this study that the use of the Bal-A-Vis-X program has
been found to help facilitate learning for many of today's
school children.
This article excerpted from research posted on the Bal-A-Vis-X
website. To learn more about Bal-A-Vis-X go to www.bal-a-vis-x.com
