Excersing helps pupils get better scores
Kids who do exercises, mimic foetal moves, show dramatic improvements in academics, says a research.
Mimicking a baby in the womb helps children learn, says a new research.
According to a reserach carried out by Dr Martin McPhillips from Queen's University Belfast, pupils who do daily exercises, mimic foetal moves - show dramatic improvements in maths and English.
Dr Mc Phillips believes that the technique, Primary Movement, is based on the fact that while they are still in the womb, babies are practising for life outside.
They go through a range of movements and reflexes while they are still foetuses, but usually grow out of them by the time they are one year old. However, some never get past the habits formed as a foetus.
And for some reason, that has been shown to hold back their school work.
He, hence, claims that by getting the students mimic those baby movements every day in class, their learning power can surely be increased.
"We adapted the foetal movements for school children. Sometimes we disguised them in songs and dance. The programme is a re-enactment of foetal life," BBC quoted Dr McPhillips, a psychologist who developed the programme, as saying.
He also insisted that though it may sound "a little ridiculous," foetal movements could hold the key to children's development.
"But when you see the foetus move, it does make a lot more sense," he said.
"These are very powerful movements and they are at a critical point in development when so much of the central nervous system for example is being laid down," he added.
Many primary schools have tried the movement therapy .A new study by Dr Julie-Anne Jordan-Black has measured the effect of the special daily exercises.
"Some children received the primary movement programme, some didn't and they were a control group. The results have shown that the children who received primary movement significantly increased their standard score in maths, spelling and reading," she explained.
Schools involved in the study reported good results. Karen Smyth of Holy Family school in Teconnaught, County Down, reported jumps in standardised scores following the use of primary movement.
"We would have seen standardised scores jumping in English from about 93 to over 110, which was massive. Normally, the child would move two to three points from year to year," she said.
"Maths was the same. It went right through from lower ability children to the top of the class," she added.
The research was paid for by the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA).