BellaOnline Forums Education Learning Disabilities Question on research for fiddling to concentrate

Can anyone help a reader with this question?

"My friends little boy (year4) often fiddles with his pencil or something else on his desk while listening to the teacher talk. He has been put on an IEP for "fiddling" -surely this is not right! as a teacher myself I think that his target of sitting still for 5 minutes at the start of a lesson will do him more harm than good.

Do you know of any research which my friend could take to his teacher to prove that he is a kinesthetic learner who needs to fiddle (blu-tack in pocket?) to concentrate?"

Hi-- I'm new to the forum, so before I respond to your post, I just wanted to introduce myself. I live in Southern California. I teach Special Education, 4-5 combo--and I love it.

Now, I was wondering about your friend's little boy. Has he been diagnosed as ADHD or with any other learning disability? Does he always fiddle, or only when he is being given direction? Maybe the teacher is just covering her bases, or setting up a papertrail for future LD testing.

Either way, he should be formally tested to prove one way (that he has ADHD, or a LD) or the other (a tactual learner with no LD)

If he is a tactual learner, maybe his mother can give him a "worry stone" or quietly squeeze one of those "worry ball/hacky sacs" when he is learning.

Here's a little information I found in my personal files from a workshop I once attended that your friend might find helpful:

Body Language and Learning Styles

How body language indicates learning styles
For intaking information

A visual learner usually sits up very straight and follows the presenter around with her eyes.

An auditory learner often softly repeats to herself words spoken by the presenter, or nods her head a lot when the facilitator is presenting

spoken information. An auditory learner often �plays a cassette in her head� when she is trying to retrieve information so she may be staring off into space when she does this.

A bodily-kinesthetic learner often slumps down when she listens.

A tactual person loves to play with objects while she listens: flicking her pen or fiddling with papers, or playing with a koosh ball while she

listens to someone talk.

Bagpipes -

Thank you so much for posting - I think your descriptions of learning styles will help many readers!

You might also ask her to look into Brain Gym.
http://www.braingym.org

Moe - that information looks interesting ... glad to see more ways of learning are being explored and recognized.

I don't have scientific data to point you to, but I can tell you that last year in my son's kindergarten they passed out "fidgets". The fidgets were small nonbreakable, very pliable soft rubber toys that the kids could literally fidget with. The teacher's insisted that it helped the kids concentrate.

Each kid got their own fidget and had to keep it at school in their cubby box. Some of the children never touched theirs, except to put it away. Other children rarely put their fidget down. It was even ok for them to put them in their mouth as long as they washed them first.

This is a school that is strictly for our county preschoolers and kindergarteners. That's their specialty. Obviously there's something to the idea, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. Personally, I think they should be offered to all primary aged children.

I have a fidget on my computer table - a piece of green glass that I found at the beach worn smooth by sand and surf, and in my coat pocket a large thick coin - the old Netherlands guilder piece no longer in use. It is about the size of a quarter but thicker.