Research Overview > Special Needs Research Report

What did an Education Specialist think?
(Report based on The Enchanted Forest)

By: Gino Lerario (M.A)

Master of Education, La Salle University, Philadelphia.
Specialises in the education of special needs children

"I have been asked to describe some of the educational applications or classroom connections regarding the guided imagination activities such as The Enchanted Forest.

I personally see them as critical learning experiences - activities that have significant impact upon the learner or developing child.

I see the guided imagination exercises as having particular importance to the special needs learner.

I am a Masters level teacher, trained in the States. I currently teach in a classroom for children with Autism in Finglas, Dublin, Ireland. I have not reviewed the activities in their entirety nor I have seen any of the workbook exercises.

Also, when I consider the guided imagination activities, I am making some assumptions about classroom implementation that may not be accurate – for example, that the teacher has flexibility in spacing out the guided imagery, or that the teacher can embellish them or even create alternate versions.

In general, I believe the guided imagination exercises can be implemented as part of the overall class curricula or as a mini-curriculum.

The exercises can help to supplement content or can themselves be the focused content. Certainly, I would expect a teacher who implements your program to work with them, at the outset, on a regular basis; this will help to instruct the children on how to use them effectively (focused content).

In this way the exercises are taught as a ‘learning tool.’ Then, the teacher could occasionally revisit the exercises when applicable, perhaps providing them as a small group option (supplementary content). The children can then use the new learning tool to unlock meaning, skill, or insight in other content areas.

Below I have listed some educational terms of theory and or practice. These areas are ones that I highlight as relevant to the guided imagination activities. After each term, I provide some commentary that I hope will clarify the connections. There is no significance to the order of listing.

Multi-Modal Learning; Varying For Learning Style; Right & Left Brain Cuing; Multiple Intelligence Theory; Motivation For Learning.

• Multi-modal refers to the various media or contexts in which content is presented. An effective lesson is one that provides multi-modal contexts that carry the information or skill.

Two examples of modes are tactile (hands-on) and visual.
The Multi-modal approach is similar to ‘adapting for learning style.’

• Learning style (or learning preference) is an important concept in current educational practice. There are many programs that help teachers define the various learning styles of their students and adapt lessons to appeal to these styles.

Examples of learning styles would be ‘visual learner’ and ‘social learner’: if I had both a visual learner and a social learner in my class, I would try to adapt the lesson or expand it so that the content is shared in both visual and social contexts.

There are many ‘styles’, and the terminology differs with each approach. (Do not confuse learning style with learning needs, the latter being associated with special education.)

• Left and Right Brain skill is, I am sure, an approach with which you are familiar.

I must caution you that in many theoretical circles (particularly in cognitive theory) ‘left and right brain’ terminology is considered to be inexact. Recent focus is on how the two hemispheres of the brain are coordinated through the centre.

Brain processing therefore utilises both left and right hemispheres simultaneously. Artistic skill, for example, may not exist in the ‘right brain’, but in the way the two hemispheres are related.

However, I find ‘Left and Right’ terminology to be helpful in that it provides a framework in which to adapt and expand lessons.

• I spoke briefly to Ms. Durkin about Howard Gardner¹s theory of Multiple Intelligences. Many wrongly assume Gardner is merely addressing learning style. Gardner is a cognitive theorist and is interested in the nuts and bolts of intelligence.

He isn’t looking at how a child simply prefers certain contexts but in how that child’s brain receives, stores, and retrieves information.

He has identified eight different forms of intelligence within the brain and, according to his theory, the brain stores information in eight different formats. While one or two intelligences may dominate, Gardner believes all eight can be developed in any one person.

• There are tons of books and Internet sites to provide more information. Of the eight (8) intelligences -- the eighth was newly identified, so most literature cites only seven -- the intelligences applicable to your program are: bodily kinesthetic, visual, intrapersonal, and musical.

Note, however, that Gardner’s approach is still theory and there are scores of critics. Yet his theory has held up for over 20 years.

• All of the above approaches are dealing with Adapting Lessons to Motivate for Learning. A goal toward effective lesson planning is to present the same content is many different forms.

Adapting and broadening lesson context is clearly the most common element in all of the above approaches.

• When a teacher adapts a lesson to provide an alternative method or methods of content delivery, a child’s motivation to learn is piqued.

Guided Imagery can be part of an overall arsenal of teaching methods -- a tool that can help teachers tailor lessons to different students.

Multi-Age Grouping; Issues Of Classroom Management; Issues Of Behavioural Management; The Special Ed Classroom; Developing Students’ Self-Esteem.

• The days of the one-room schoolhouse are not gone after all!...particular in special educational settings where children of different ages are placed in the same room.

(Often the difference in age is not as problematic as the difference in learning style or in special learning needs).

The teacher who has students of varying ages is often overworked and exhausted because s/he is juggling very different content and interests.

• Many approaches specifically for multi-aged grouping have been designed, and in fact, some schools purposely mix ages because it can be beneficial to those students. Finding common tasks for a diverse group is critical.

Guided imagery is an activity that can apply easily to multi-aged grouping – it’s an activity in which several ages can simultaneously participate.

The follow-up activities, of course, would differ in format for each child, but the ‘common task’ is important, enhancing class bonding and easing teacher preparation.

• Guided imagination exercises can become part of the regular routine in the classroom, on a daily or weekly basis. They can also be used in individual or small group settings. Children can be encouraged to choose the exercises from an array of options.

These can even serve as productive time-fillers - an option for those who finish their work early, for example, using headphones).

• Interventions that involve intrapersonal exploration are critical yet often hard to come by. The guided imagination exercise is a tool that teaches children to control their own behaviour, or that at least provides an effective outlet for expression/ emotion.

Learning to calm oneself and to mine the resources within oneself -- as taught in your program – empowers children to respond to their environment more meaningfully.

• Laying down and listening is easy to do (in principle). Completing this one aspect of the task can be reassuring to those who want to fit-in with the others.

Beyond that, of course, engaging with the spoken imagery can allow a child to become aware of him or herself in a new way. The child can then begin to develop the idea that ‘we are in relationship with ourselves.’

This is the first step to learning to appreciate and then to control ourselves; the first step to empowerment, really.

Language Arts Enrichment;

(Imagination Gym have already mined this aspect efficiently in The Enchanted Forest. I will merely highlight some relevant concepts here.)

• Oral Language development has heavy emphasis in the revised curriculum in Ireland. Oral Language is seen as the ‘mother of all learning.’

The guided imagery exercises are perfectly suited to developing listening and speaking skills. They can lend themselves easily to drama and story telling.

• Journaling is also a critical concept in developing communication skills -- especially in that the guided imagery helps a child to find motivation for writing and drawing.

Cross Curricular Applications; Meaning Making; Personal Connections To Lesson Content.

• Linking concepts across curricula can help children develop critical thinking skills as well as help children create meaning.

Some examples:
• Using the Dr. Seuss book ‘the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins’ to deal with counting or classification; employing the life of Galileo to cover science, art, math, social skills, and theology; Using dance to distinguish cultures.

• Even more important is utilising a tool of one content area and applying it to another area: (EX: using reading skills to break down a math problem; using math classification skills to enhance paragraph formation).

• Guided imagery is a tool that can help to link concepts of various curricula. The Magic Balloon Ride, for example, links interpersonal enrichment with the science of hot air ballooning, or with astronomy.

• Throwing off the weights before take-off provides an excellent opportunity to talk about weight and balance and subtraction.

• Many teachers today are talking about ‘Making Meaning.’ They refer to the phenomenon that children learn facts without understanding; they learn by rote but the information has no meaning for them personally.

‘Math has nothing to do with Art which has nothing to do with Cookery.’

Guided imagination exercises may be one tool that allows children to employ what they are learning to create meaning for themselves.

One aspect of creativity is seeing new connections between divergent ideas, and the guided imagination exercises can allow this to occur.

Developing Visualisation And Focusing Skills; Developing And Strengthening Memory Skills And Comprehension.

• Many children in the special needs area have difficulty visualising concepts and focusing their energies. Through patient practice, a teacher can use guided imagery to help develop visualisation strategies, which can be applied to other learning areas.

S/he can also help to teach children how to remain physically calm, dealing effectively with multiple stimuli that make attention difficult to maintain.

Guided imagery can be used to help ease the stress which is pervasive in special education.

• ‘Shrink yourself and walk through a addition problem involving two-digit numbers...come across a gnome ... you ask the gnome to help you carry excess tens across to the tens columns.’

• Guided Imagery provides ample opportunity to retell and revisit concepts. By repeating an imagination exercise, you help the child build a network of thinking patterns and connections.

• Some cognitive theorists working in the area of memory may see the visualisation exercises as a way of depicting and exploring the concept of ‘nesting.’ It can be said that our memories are spatial, that is, they are like maps. It is said that we store information in ‘spaces’ throughout the brain.

Imagine yourself exploring the map or layout of a room by closing your eyes and ‘walking’ through it: ‘In the office is a desk, the desk has three drawers, the first draw contains a box, inside the box is a pendant, inside the pendant is a picture of mammy.’ Our memory constructs are similar.

We ‘nest’ concepts inside other concepts, which in turn, are nested inside larger constructs. Retrieving information from our memory, therefore, is a process of retrieving the larger constructs and exploring their component parts. In reverse, encoding information into our memory involves classifying and grouping.

The guided imagination exercises can help children with poor memory to develop skills of nesting and improving upon the use of spatial memory. Simply using the exercises on a regular basis may have consequences in overall academic performance.

Connections To Vygotskian Learning Theory:
Social relationships and the role of language.

• When I mentioned Howard Gardner (above) I touched on cognitive learning theory. The most prominent cognitive learning theorist is Piaget, who saw the child developing schemata (similar to nesting) as a means of building physical knowledge constructs in the brain.

Another prominent learning theory is the Information Processing Theory (IPT), which likens the brain to a computer.

According to IPT, the brain is an elaborate warehouse of knowledge that can be programd is various ways. These theories are the two most popular. Howard Gardner’s theory is also becoming popular.

• Lev Vygotsky is my personal favourite cognitive theorist. He is lesser known because of political reasons (his research was suppressed during the Communist revolution in Russia). But he is currently being rediscovered.

The Vygotskian approach accounts for the learning relationship between adult and child. Vygotsky saw the adult as guiding the child through the learning process. His ‘zone of proximal development (ZPD)’ is the area of a child’s potential, and the teacher wades in that area, assisting the child forward.

Vygotsky also saw language as the primary mode of knowledge-building (not schemata or nests). When Oral language ‘goes underground’ in the brain (or psyche) learning constructs are built.

• The Vygotskian approach is critical to those who espouse a new role for the teacher: one who guides children to make their own meaning rather that one who dishes out information.

The teacher therefore becomes a resource rather than an enforcer, a guide rather than a grader. The Guided Imagination exercises appeal to that approach: you let the child control the learning process, but you serve as guide.

The imagination exercises themselves are good analogies for the Vygotskian Learning theory.

Use In Lesson Planning

• Lesson plans formats vary but most plans attempt to account for the adaptations that are needed for different learning styles and needs in the classroom. I see the guided imagination exercises as fitting in easily to lesson planning in many curricular areas.

• Two examples of lesson plan components are ‘Set induction’ and ‘Content Elaboration.’ ‘Set induction’ refers to how a new topic is set-up or introduced, much like the ‘hook’ in the advertising world.

The set induction deals with how children’s interests and motivations are readied in advance of the lesson. ‘Content Elaboration’ deals with the aftermath of or response to a lesson -- how the children apply what they have learned in a new way.

The guided imagination exercises lend themselves to either end of the lesson plan (and places in between).

• Examples of use as set induction: In advance of a lesson on how hot air rises we can soar with the Magic Balloon Ride. Magic Bluebell Grove can help introduce the concept of myth or of comparing large and small. Examples of use in response to a lesson:

Use the Enchanted Forest to apply learning from a lesson on tree species. Use the Magic Balloon Ride to visit specific planets learned in a lesson on the Milky Way Galaxy.

Individual Education Plans

• Specialising interventions for individual learners is a critical component in special education. Most children identified as having special learning needs have ‘Individualised Education Plans (IEPs).’

These are, in effect, separate curricula and often supersede the overall departmental curriculum. I can well foresee guided imagination exercises being cited in IEPs of specific students.