Right brain: how does it affect your life

Last week we talked about LEFT BRAINS, this week we focus on the right brains.

Right brainers are the brainstormers, the idea guys of the world. They are creative, but you knew that already, and they think outside of the box. They don't let rules get in their way of being creative.

They love challenges. They want to be challenged and use those creative juices to come up with a plan. But they bore easily. As soon as something becomes predictable or if they've mastered something, they lose interest when the challenge has been conquered.
This make them prone to having many unfinished projects, even those they like and enjoy. They will start out with gusto and steamroller into a new project or idea, but they start losing interest along the way and sometimes never finish.

Right brain children need a lot of encouragement to finish what they started. Read through the whole book, finish the project, finish assignments soon (discourage procrastination...), and finish an activity. It happens very easily for them to start with tennis and two weeks later refuse to go to lessons. The have to finish the year or season with sports and arts that they started to understand what it means to push through to the finish, even when it's not fun.

Right brain children don't enjoy school. School is full of structure and routine and they hate that. They want freedom, friends and challenges. They like school for their friends, sports and activities, not the learning. They do like subjects like art and music where they can put that right brain to good use and they will enjoy certain subjects that interest them, where they can learn something exciting.
But for the most part they are not excited about school

When right brainers stress, their left brains are compromised, which explains why they can perform up to 25% under their true potential due to stress in exams. They frequently have "blanks" in exams, seeing the typography of exact page with the information they need (where the headers, content and pictures are), but unable to recall any words or actual information.

In an ideal world the right brainers would come up with exciting ideas and start off projects and then hand them over to the left brainers who are great at structuring things, making it work and finishing projects.

I remind you that this is just a taste of what a Genetic Brain Profile will tell you. Even if you know all of your dominant modalities, it's the interaction between them that makes things interesting. And don't think that an online left vs right brain test will be accurate - for some it is, others will get mixed results depending on the test they take.

I will gladly answer any questions you have and if you are curious about your Genetic Brain Profile, give me a shout out and I will happily assess yours (and/or your children's).

If you've missed my previous posts on the left handed and right handed traits, be sure to visit those posts for more insightful information!

Exam, Procrastination & Time Management

When it comes to studying, students are notorious for their excellent procrastination skills. Procrastination during the school year can cause stress and frustration to both students and parents as exams approach and the pressure to remember important facts increases. With just a little bit of planning and organising, the stress levels surrounding exams can be reduced significantly. Let’s see how...

On Your Marks...
You’ve heard it said over and over, but it’s worth repeating: there is no time like the present. Don’t wait for tomorrow or put studying off until the night before the big test, start you exam preparations today. The possibility exists that if you fall into this routine of pre-test cramming; you may well be putting all the information into your short term memory rather than your long-term memory; meaning that you will have to re-learn it all before the next test or exam.

Get Set...
Don’t spend too much time planning and organising either. It can easily happen that you spend hours or days planning to study, organising books and making a neat time table when in fact you are not really focussing on the material you need to be revising. Complete your planning quickly and well ahead of time.
When is the right time to start preparing for an exam? A month, 2 weeks, or maybe 2 even days before? No. The key is to do a little bit of preparation every day from the start of the term so that all the work will be summarised and ready to study by exam time.

STUDYING = revision, identifying possible questions, working out long questions, going over old papers.

Studying is not making notes from scratch.

Go!
Taking notes in class is your first step to being prepared for exams. When you get home after school, take some time to read through your class notes and compare them to your textbook and other material to make sure your notes are complete.

Don’t rewrite your textbook! The idea is to summarise the key points in your textbook into a few pages with as few words as possible. If you like, use colours, pictures, graphs, etc. to make it easy for you to understand your notes.
If you invest a little time every day after school in exam preparation, you won’t waste hours during exam time prettying up your notes; you’ll be ready to study them much faster than if your notes are a mess.

Create a revision sheet for each subject and mark your progress in each section as you complete it. It is also important to make notes of sections you do not fully know or understand and need to return to. This way you can keep track of your progress and it’s a fantastic way for parents to monitor your studying.
Not sure what a revision sheet is or how to make one?
You can download a printable sample revision sheet and print a copy by following this link.

A Break from the action
It is also good to remember that students shouldn’t be studying around the clock.

Study breaks are very important to let the brain rest and be refreshed for the next study session. Study sessions should range between 20 min for Gr. 4 students and 1 hour for Gr. 12 and above.

Breaks should be between 10 and 30 min, but this does not mean taking a quick nap or watching a TV program. During study breaks, students should engage in some kind of physical activity. Play outside with the dog, shoot some hoops, jog around the block, run around the house or just take a walk. The physical activity will help energise your mind in preparation for the next study session.

Whilst we've managed to scratch the surface regarding effective study skills and how to avoid procrastination, a personal consultation with one of our trained Edu-Profilogists® will give you an in-depth insight into YOUR personal learning style. You will also be given customised study skills tips and one on one training on information recall techniques best suited to you. To book your assessment and personal study skills course, email now.