A List of Games & Exercises in The Everyday Genius

Preface by Michael Alexander, Principal, Guggenheim Elementary School

A Mind-Map, of The Everyday Genius

Part One: The Promise of Integrative Learning
We now know a great deal about how we learn—and how well we are capable of learning. This knowledge will enable us to fill the urgent need for a better education than our schools now offer.

Introduction: How to Use this Book

1. The Infinite Possibilities of Your Child's Mind
Your children have much greater talent than can be developed by our current educational system. You are going to have to help.

2. How You and Your Children Naturally Learn
And how traditional methods of teaching fail to match the way we naturally learn.

3. The Building Blocks of Learning
An explanation of the three components of the learning process: input, synthesis, and output. How Georgi Lozanov's innovative approach speeds learning, and makes it more enjoyable.

4. The Background and Development of Integrative Learning
The development of Integrated Learning by Lozanov and his followers, and my experience adapting it to a wider range of applications.

5. Adjusting Learning to the Brain
Recent research on the brain is yielding a better understanding of paths—and obstacles—to learning.

6. How Integrative Learning Works in the Classroom
A first-hand look at a public school where Integrative Learning is changing the lives of students and teachers.

Part Two: Setting the Stage for Integrative Learning
How to create an environment in which learners and learning will thrive. For parents, teachers, and other adults this may require some changes in attitude. But your children can help, and the benefits are immediate.

7. How to Find Happiness in the Puritan Work Ethic
Many of us believe in work for its own sake. This is a questionable principle when applied to learning. Making learning more enjoyable makes it more successful.

8. Working Within Limits
Children need structure and need to be taught the basics. They learn best when they are helped to discover the underlying principles for themselves.

9. Making Your life the Way You Want It
We learn and teach crucial attitudes without being aware of it. By heeding and directing these subconscious thoughts, we can use our minds more purposefully and positively.

10. Learning to Deal with Feelings
How we recognize and express feelings shapes the way we deal with everything else. Negative emotions can suppress thinking and block learning. Here are some guidelines to help turn feelings from a negative to a positive force.

11. The Joys of Cooperation
Working together as a cooperative group makes for a better family, a better classroom, a better world—and more successful individuals.

Part Three: Falling in Love with Learning
A collection of activities which have helped many people to discover the deep reserves of intelligence most of us never realize we possess. They can inspire you and your children to collaborate in the search for your everyday genius.

12. I Never Heard a World You Said
Most people never get listened to adequately. Those who do, get better at thinking.

13. I'm Glad You Were Born, Because
When we hear good things about ourselves, we get smarter. When we tell other people good things about themselves, that also makes us smarter.

14. The Annotated Little Miss Muffet
The most wonderful buried treasure is in each individual human mind. When we learn to make connections and see beneath the surface, we can dig up that treasure.

15. Core Concepts That Structure Our Thinking
Such basic concepts as sequence and balance have powerful applications in wide ranges of thought. These core ideas and others can be experienced and understood through physical actions, even by young children.

16. Is It Really You?
You can waste your whole life carrying out other people's programs. Why not carry out your own?

17. The Garden of Memory and Creativity
Learning to trust in your creativity and freeing the imagination to find its own way to express ideas and solve problems.

18. On Becoming a Poet
Finding a well of inspiration with music and relaxation: an exercise to increase writing ability and enjoyment.

19. Only the Helpless Never Ask for Help
Really successful people are good at asking for help at the right time. But some help is genuinely harmful, some is disrespectful and some is a nuisance.

20. Meaning Deep Down to Your Gut
The importance of being truthful about feelings. Practice at expressing emotions can be fun—and can promote family harmony.

21. It's My Turn Now But How Am I Doing?
Each member of the family or group deserves a chance to be heard. A respectful hearing communicates the principle that everyone's opinion matters. Here are some useful ground rules.

22. Intellectual Sleight of Hand
We all can be innovators. A game of invention can help us look at familiar things in new ways.

23. There's More Than One Way to Be Right
The surprising number of right answers you can find when you don't worry about giving wrong ones.

24. Instant Memory Through Visual Thinking
Using mind-mapping to master large amounts of material quickly and easily.

Appendix One Hope for a Brain-Damaged Child
A mother's experience in raising a brain-damaged child and helping him to live a normal and productive life offers lessons for us all.

Appendix Two The Principles of Integrative Learning
A summary of key concepts, mainly for teachers.

 
 
 
 
 
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