Exercises

Strengthening intellectual "muscles"

Just as a personal trainer plans workouts that balance and enhance the strength and flexibility of the body’s different muscle groups, a BrainBuilders mentor plans activities for each session that strengthen the intellectual “muscles”.  We call these exercises LIFTERS and they fall roughly into three equally vital categories.

Three Main Exercise Categories

• Root Lifters: Reading Comprehension, Composition, Critical Thinking, and Vocabulary
• Trunk Lifters: Cultural Literacy, Memory, Rhetoric, and Character building
• Canopy Lifters: Curiosity, Right Brain Work, Creativity, and Wonder.
  

When the intellectual “muscles” are in peak condition and functioning cohesively, a student can truly understand an academic subject, use that knowledge competently, and experience pleasure in the learning of it. Imagine a scientist without curiosity, an engineer without creativity, a parent without rhetorical effectiveness, or any kind of leader without a strong vocabulary.

Each hour-long BrainBuilders session exercises and develops one intellectual “muscle” from each of the three groups.  For instance, a mentor and student may play a vocabulary improv game that requires a student to use, pronounce and spell a word correctly (vocabulary) and use it in a sentence that fits into a larger story (creativity, composition). The mentor and student may also take turns writing sentences, enabling the mentor to model good writing.  They may move on to poetry, memorizing Frost, Wordsworth or Dickinson with a visual icon technique (memory, creativity, right brain work) and explicating meaning as they go (critical thinking, character building.)