#296 - The Pyramid of Learning

What is the Pyramid of Learning and why is it important?

Williams and Shellenberger (1996) formulated this pyramid of learning and it highlights how sensory integration processing relates to the child’s learning process.

This simple visual aide explains how academic learning, daily living activities (like brushing your teeth and getting dressed), even how your child behaves; it all grows and develops from a strong sensory foundation.

https://www.smartpediatrics.com/post/understandingsensoryprocessing

We dive into WHAT the Pyramid of Learning is, we talk about the different levels and how they build upon each other, and we talk about what you as a therapist, parent, or educator can do to help the children in your life develop and thrive while using the Pyramid of Learning as a framework!

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The Beauty of Building Rapport
Treatment Planning Made Easy
6 Ocular Motor Activities
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Transcript

Jessica: 0:00

There's like blocks in the pyramid, right? For all these different skills in these different areas, if one of those blocks is missing or is not developed, potentially the whole pyramid could fall down, right? So it's really substantial to make sure that we are aware and if your child is struggling with behaviors at the very top, but take it back and look at like this whole pyramid and say, oh, my gosh, well, their eye hand coordination is really bad, or their motor planning is really bad, and they really need to work on that. And so that could be a connection as to why they're struggling with some of those top pyramid strategies.

Rachel: 0:36

I'm Rachel.

Jessica: 0:36

And I'm Jessica. And this is All Things Sensory by Harkla.

Rachel: 0:40

We are both certified occupational therapy assistants and together with Harkla, we are on a mission to empower parents, therapists, and educators to help raise confident and strong children of all abilities.

Jessica: 0:51

On this podcast, we chat about all things sensory diving into special needs, occupational therapy, parenting, self care, overall health and wellness and so much more.

Rachel: 1:02

We're here to provide raw, honest and fun strategies, ideas and information for parents, therapists and educators as well as other professionals to implement into daily life.

Jessica: 1:13

Thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel: 1:19

Hey, there, welcome back to All Things Sensory by Harkla. You're listening to your good friends, Rachel and Jessica. Yes, we are your friends. We're here. We're here every Wednesday. We love you. We hope that you love us. Hello.

Jessica: 1:31

If your here, you must love us.

Rachel: 1:32

Or this is your first time. You're like, wow, these girls are self absorbed. No, we're actually not. But speaking of self absorbed.

Jessica: 1:40

We will be for just a minute. Today we're going to talk about the pyramid of

Rachel: 1:42

Just for a minute. Because truly your reviews and learning. What it is, why its importance, all the things and your feedback, keep us going and help us reach the people who then we'll give you some tips at the end, of course. So first the need this information the most. So if you have not already left us a review on iTunes or Spotify, go ahead and hit pause, go do that. Leave some stars. Write us a love note. Whatever you're feeling today, just let us know. We are going to give a shout out to this person called PD.OT. So I'm assuming she's a therapist or he. I don't know exactly, it doesn't say. But the person said, as an OT myself, oh shocker, I am always learning something new from all things sensory. This podcast is a great resource for parents and other members of the team and a better understanding of sensory. The delivery of the information is digestible and informative without containing confusing jargon so everybody can truly benefit. So thank you PD OT for leaving us a review. Like I said, we appreciate it. We love you and let's talk about what we're going to talk about today. question is what is the pyramid of learning? Well, first, the pyramid of learning is something that we talk about in like a lot of our episodes. We talked about in our courses. It's like this abstract pyramid visual that we're going to break down today and explain to you why exactly it is important. So what it is, these two individuals, Williams and Shellenberger from 1996 formulated this pyramid of learning and how it highlights sensory integration, and sensory processing, and reflex development as it relates to the child's learning process.

Jessica: 3:29

We will link in the show notes the main like page that we found for the pyramid of learning, which includes the

Rachel: 3:36

Which is responsible for everything including receiving, visual of the pyramid of learning. But we're gonna go through it really quick and just describe kind of what it looks like. So it's a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is the central nervous system. So essentially, the base of our body and our ability to process the world and get through the day is our CNS, processing, and responding to sensory information.

Jessica: 4:08

As well as our bodily systems.

Rachel: 4:11

Breathing. Heart rate. Blood flow.

Jessica: 4:15

What is it? Homeostasis?

Rachel: 4:17

Yeah, It's important.

Jessica: 4:18

Yes. That's the base.

Rachel: 4:20

We are a little like spicy today.

Jessica: 4:23

It's because I'm sick.

Rachel: 4:26

So anyways, this pyramid starts with a central nervous system, that is what has to be strong in order for everything else to develop on top of it. From there we have the sensory systems.

Jessica: 4:40

Which is the sensory processing, sensory modulation, sensory integration., and if you've been here for a couple of episodes, you know that we have eight different sensory systems that process the world. That help us function and get through our day. We do have an episode owed on every single one of these sensory systems that you can listen to better understand what they each are, what they mean, what dysfunction looks like.

Rachel: 5:10

Someone did actually message me saying that they are starting with our podcasts from the very beginning and their obsessed and I'm like, Oh, the beginning ones. Goo

Jessica: 5:21

When we first started out six years ago.

Rachel: 5:24

Yeah. So anyways, sensory systems, sensory processing, sensory modulation. Holy cow, you guys, this is the bottom of the pyramid, like we have to be able to process and modulate input and that's like the bottom like. Whoa, how important.

Jessica: 5:43

So essentially, if your body and your brain are not processing sensory input properly, adequately.

Rachel: 5:52

Efficiently.

Jessica: 5:53

Efficiently, then there will be challenges and these challenges manifest in a variety of ways. It's different for each person. It can manifest as fight, flight, or freeze responses. It can manifest as emotional dysregulation. It can manifest in the body as coordination challenges, which is actually the next level of the pyramid, which is like the motor sensory motor development. So that ability to process sensory information will affect everything else above at the top of the pyramid.

Rachel: 6:29

Yep, so if you are not processing and modulating this input, like Jessica just mentioned, you're not going to be able to build on to the next step, which is the sensory motor development, where we have a reflex maturity. Hello primitive reflexes. Body scheme, so being able to be aware of where your body is. Being able to identify like, that's like the draw person test, right. So like, if you had to draw a picture of yourself, like you can put your eyes where they are, you can put your belly button where it's supposed to be. But for someone who struggles with body scheme, and body schema, body awareness, they're drawing a picture of themselves, and they can't even like identify where their belly button is on their body. And also in this area is the ability to screen input. So that means auditory input is coming in and they can filter it or visual information is coming in, movement.. All this input is coming in, and bombarding the system and we're able to accurately screen and have an appropriate adaptive response to the input. Whether it's a motor response, whether it's a sensory response, being able to screen that appropriately.

Jessica: 7:34

Also, within the sensory motor development is postural security, awareness of two sides of the body, and motor planning. So being able to maintain an upright position, move your body in a coordinated manner, learn new motor movements, coordinate both sides of the body together, and understand that process. So going back with the central nervous system, we have sensory processing and then we have motor development. They build on each other. If one piece at the bottom is lacking, or missing, then something above it is also going to be lacking or missing.

Rachel: 8:19

I think this visual is really helpful for therapists when they're developing like goals and treatment planning and treatment activities. Because let's say you're working with a kiddo and you want to improve their ocular motor control.

Jessica: 8:30

We haven't even gotten to that yet.

Rachel: 8:31

I know. But let's say you want to work on that and they can't sit on a, like an open platform swing without feeling gravitationally insecure. There's no point of working on the ocular motor control until we really focus and hone in and develop that postural security, the crossing midline, and the bilateral coordination. So it's a really helpful visual of like, okay, this is like what we need to focus on first and build on, and then we can move on to the next Yep. So also in this perceptual motor development,

Jessica: 8:58

Yeah, so the next level after sensory motor development level. is perceptual motor development. So this includes all of the we've got auditory language skills. So being able to visual, auditory, and postural control. So hand eye coordination, ocular motor control, postural adjustment. So postural adjustment is going to be things like writing and equilibrium reactions, your ability to catch yourself if you're falling, your ability to right your body if your base of support moves. That ocular motor control is your eye muscles work together to smoothly track and locate objects in your environment. This goes right along with reading and writing, catching a ball, moving safely through your environment, and then hand eye coordination. We often think of ball skills, but hand eye coordination is also going to be involved in writing tasks or self care tasks, like feeding, buttoning, zippers, tying shoes. interpret and process what we're hearing, being able to provide language skills, and be able to communicate through what we are hearing. Visual spatial perception, so being able to identify where we are in comparison to other objects, other people, our environment. And also in this area is attention center functions. So things like selective attention, things like divided attention, being able to sustain attention on preferred and non preferred tasks. Filter out unnecessary information in order to attend to a task.

Rachel: 10:43

Yes.

Jessica: 10:44

So all of these higher level skills that we're getting into, in order to master these higher level skills, development, we have to have that base of support of our central nervous system is functioning properly, our sensory processing is functioning properly, our sensory motor development has processed, we have coordination of our body, our reflexes are integrated,. and then our perceptual motor development can occur. Our eyes can work together, our hand eye coordination can develop, we have language skills, we have ability to attend to tasks. It all builds on each other. So if you are working with a child, or if your child struggles with these higher level pieces, which we haven't even made it to the top yet.

Rachel: 11:32

We're not there yet.

Jessica: 11:33

We're not even there yet. But if your child is struggling with these higher level tasks, or these higher level development skills, we have to go back to the foundation first. That's kind of the whole point of this episode. So at the very top of the pyramid is cognition and

Rachel: 11:45

Yes. And also, I think it's important to note that if you click on the link in the show notes, and you can see this intellect. And this includes behavior, daily living visual that we're referring to, there's like blocks in the pyramid, right? For all these different skills in these different areas, if one of those blocks is missing or is not developed, I mean, potentially, the whole pyramid could fall down. Right? So it's really substantial to make sure that we are aware and if your child is struggling with behaviors at the very top, we're just about to talk about that. But take it back and look at like this whole pyramid and say, Oh, my gosh, well, their eye hand coordination is really bad, or their motor planning is really bad, and they really need to work on that. And so that could be a connection as to why they're struggling with some of those top pyramid strategies. activities, which are our ADLs or activities of daily living, self care tasks, hygiene tasks, social skills, and then the very, very top of the pyramid is academic learning. So if you have a child, who is in school and they are struggling in school, they're struggling to process new math concepts, they're struggling with reading and writing, they're struggling with social skills with their friends and their peers, we have to find that underlying why. Go back to the base of the pyramid and say, is their central nervous system functioning? Are they thirsty? Dehydrated? Are they having bowel issues? Let's look at their sensory processing. Are they tactically overstimulated? Is their vestibular system needing more input throughout the day? Let's look at their primitive reflexes, their body awareness, their postural control, their muscle tone. Let's look at their ocular motor skills. Do they need vision therapy because their eye muscles are not working together? Let's look at all of these different things that are impacting their academic learning, their behavior, their ability to get through their day successfully. So there you have it. There's the pyramid in its glory. It should be on the top of the pedestal. It's just really something that is so meaningful to everything that we preach, and we train and we teach here at All Things Sensory.

Jessica: 14:04

Alright, now let's get into some tips, the things that you can do as a therapist as a parent to build that strong foundation to start at the bottom and work your way up. We do have an episode on treatment planning, it's episode 133, and that is another episode of your therapist. That is a good episode to go to next if you haven't listened to it already, because we do kind of break it down of like how to treatment plan. And I don't think we necessarily talked about the pyramid of learning in that episode. But you could combine these two episodes together to make an amazing treatment plan for all of your clients.

Rachel: 14:44

Yes. So the first thing is to focus on connection. In order for our central nervous system, our reflexes, our sensory system, in order for a child to progress in any way, they need to feel safe, they feel connected and secure. Whether that's you, the therapists, the parent or the caregiver, the teacher, the professional working with the child, it is your number one priority to help the child feel safe. I mean, biologically like a warm house, that's helpful as well, food, water, all that stuff is important as well. But make sure that the child has rapport built with you, and you are really connecting. If you're a parent, and you are in OT and your child, you don't feel like your OT has that connection built with your child, bring that up,. Maybe it's time to switch therapists, but you want to make sure that they are really taking the time to build that connection and make sure they feel secure. You're not just gonna throw them on a swing, if they're partially insecure, and say good luck and sit down and not help them. So.

Jessica: 15:48

Hopefully not. We do have an episode on building reports, it's episode 74. So that's a really good one for therapists and parents alike. But I think that this cannot be talked about enough. Like this connection to our kids is so so important that it has to be the number one priority. If you're a parent, if you're a professional working with children, you need to get down on your child's level, make them feel safe, make them like you. I know that sounds weird. But like.

Rachel: 16:23

Truly.

Jessica: 16:24

If a child doesn't like you, then they're not going to make progress. So you have to figure out a way to make therapy enjoyable, to make school enjoyable, to make the home enjoyable, and to help the child feel safe so that their central nervous system is not constantly in fight or flight.

Rachel: 16:43

Yep. So the next thing we need to do is get back to the basics. We're going to think about that primal, developmental movement, those activities that we're doing in infancy and toddlerhood. If you have older kiddos or if you're the adult are working on this yourself, we're going to do things like crawling. We're going to get on the floor and creep and army crawl and use our toes to dig into the ground and propel ourselves forward. We're going to roll in both directions. We're going to climb thing. We're going to hug each other and connect and like build a secure attachment. I know it sounds wild. But it's so important. Nothing to add to that one.

Jessica: 17:22

You've covered at all. The next one is to incorporate yoga and I love this because I have just within the last six months developed a really consistent yoga routine myself. I am in the middle of a continuing education course about yoga for children, it's from Pepsi. I will link it in the show notes for you because I know that all of our therapists are going to want to take that course and it's really, really good. But building in a yoga routine or incorporating yoga in some way. Not just the movements and the poses, but also the mindfulness and the breathing, combined with the poses or separately from the poses are so so important. So many of our kids are not breathing. They're shallow breathing. They're breathing fast. They're not able to take really deep, full, we call belly breaths, and so we want to teach them how to breathe. We want to teach them how to slow down their breathing and take full, deep breaths. We want to teach them how to be mindful of their body. We want to teach them the different

poses: 18:36

cat cows, down dog to cobra, those are some of our favorites because it also addresses primitive reflexes. What I'm learning from the course, the twisting poses or the rotational poses are great for digestion. The back bending poses are great for alertness. The forward bending poses are great for calming the central nervous system. See if you can find a YouTube Kids yoga video. Get some kids yoga cards to incorporate into the sensory diet routine, figure out a way to incorporate these strategies into the daily or weekly routine, and I think you'll see a huge benefit.

Rachel: 19:19

Love that. Number four is we're going to focus on the ocular motor skill. So you remember in the pyramid above, let's see we are working on the perceptual motor development section. This is like the top half of the pyramid. Hand coordination and ocular motor control, visual spatial, all that good stuff. So you can do this by building the underlying eye muscle strength. You can connect and take your child to a developmental optometrist. You can do vision therapy or get a vision therapy assessment. If that's something that you're feeling could be beneficial, we highly recommend. We do have a YouTube video that kind of explains this in more detail with visuals, which is helpful to be able to see what we're talking about. You're gonna focus on things like cicades and pursuits, convergence and divergence, and we have some favorite games that really address this. The first one is spot it, where you have like pictures on the cards and you have to match them. And you can hold the two cards in different positions like horizontally apart from each other. Vertically, diagonally for the child to look between and build their ocular motor skills, those cicades. You can do a game called Look Look, which is again, kind of like a visual perceptual, same as Picturica. Those are fun ones. Zoom ball has the handles with a little football on it and you can open it and close it, open it and close it back and forth with a partner and that works on the convergence and divergence. Playing catch, kicking balls, trapping balls. Bal-A-Vis-X is another great program we love. I wish we could have the creator on the podcast, would that be fun to talk about Bal-A-Vis-X.

Jessica: 20:56

That would be super good.

Rachel: 20:57

You need to reach out to them and say, Hey, here's a good podcast you should get on, fill free. Yeah, just really focusing on the eye muscles and doing less screen time if that's something that you're relying on a lot right now and just try to make that transition away from handheld objects to more like movement, visual activities.

Jessica: 21:20

The last one here, I feel like should actually have been before ocular motor skills and maybe even before the yoga.

Rachel: 21:27

Honestly, it probably should have been number two,.

Jessica: 21:29

Maybe number two, yeah,

Rachel: 21:31

It's fine. In no particular order.

Jessica: 21:32

In no particular order. This is to include a variety, a wide range of sensory experiences for the child to learn and process and modulate, right? We are looking at our pyramid and sensory processing is down at the bottom. It's a foundational skill, foundational part of the development process, and a foundational part of being able to get through your day. If you are dysregulated. If your child is dysregulated because of too much or too little sensory input in their day, it affects everything else. So we want to identify sensory preferences, we want to meet the sensory threshold, and then incorporate a variety of sensory input throughout the day. You can use essential oils, you can use your visual-ocular motor games, add in more heavy work, more full body movements like animal walks, jumping and crashing, crawling. We want to add more head position changes into the routine. So this is that vestibular input, rolling somersaults, spinning.

Rachel: 22:39

Windmills.

Jessica: 22:40

Windmills. We want to add a variety of flavored and textured foods. We want to work on emotional intelligence and identifying how the emotions feel in our body in different parts of the day. We want to add music into the routine. Add fast, upbeat, fun music to help wake up the body in the morning, add slow classical music into the evening routine, look into purchasing the listening program from advanced brain technologies, and incorporate that into your daily routine. So there's a lot of ways to add different sensory experiences into the daily routine, just have to put your sensory goggles on.

Rachel: 23:20

Yep.

Jessica: 23:21

And we do have a full course on sensory diet, sensory diet routines, and it teaches you everything that I just talked about. It teaches you how to identify sensory needs, how to meet the sensory threshold, and we give you a full library have sensory activities for each of the eight sensory systems. It's our sensory diet digital course and we'll link it in the show notes. Because it's so important for your children, for you yourself as adults. So check that out.

Rachel: 23:51

Yeah, and with that, I don't think we have anything else to say on this topic other than it is so important. Please go to the show notes, click the link, read through the article, look at the visual, screenshot it, print it, put it on your fridge, put it in your OT clinic, put it on your desk as a reminder, it's just so important. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this. But I just feel like.

Jessica: 24:15

It's so important.

Rachel: 24:16

So important for people to be aware of it. I just feel like so many people are like, Oh, hey, this kid should be getting A's and B's and should be thriving in school. And you're like, well, they can't even hold a Superman position so how are they going to be able to write their name legibly?

Jessica: 24:30

Yeah, we really need to look at those foundational skills of sensory processing, reflex integration, body awareness. It all has an impact.

Rachel: 24:42

Maybe send this episode to a teacher that you know, honestly. Because I feel like we need that awareness of like, hey, let's make sure those base building blocks are strong and secure and then we'll be able to thrive in school better.

Jessica: 24:57

Yeah, that's true. It's good point. It If you liked this episode, if you found it helpful, send it to a friend. Take a screenshot and post it on social media. Let us know you're listening. We are at All Things Sensory podcast on Instagram and leave us a review.

Rachel: 25:13

Which you already did. You pause the episode and you left us a review. We're gonna go read those. Thank you so much.

Jessica: 25:20

And we will talk to you next time.

Rachel: 25:22

Okay, bye. Thank you so much for listening to All Things Sensory by Harkla.

Jessica: 25:27

If you want more information on anything mentioned in the show, head over to Harkla.co/podcast to get the show notes.

Rachel: 25:35

If you have any follow up questions, the best place to ask those is in the comments, on the show notes, or message us on our Instagram account, which is at Harkla_family or at all things sensory podcast. If you just search Harkla, you'll find us there.

Jessica: 25:51

Like we mentioned before our podcast listeners get 10% off their first order at Harkla. Whether it's for one of our digital courses or one of our sensory swings, the discount code sensory, will get you 10% off.

Rachel: 26:15

Head to Harkla.co/sensory to use that discount code right now.

Jessica: 26:16

We are so excited to work together to help create confident kids all over the world. While we make every effort to share correct information, we're still learning.

Rachel: 26:25

We will double check all of our facts but realize that medicine is a constantly changing science and art.

Jessica: 26:30

One doctor or therapist may have a different way of doing things from another.

Rachel: 26:34

We are simply presenting our views and opinions on how to address common sensory challenges, health related difficulties, and what we have found to be beneficial that will be as evidence based as possible.

Jessica: 26:46

By listening to this podcast you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or your child.

Rachel: 26:54

Consult your child's pediatrician or therapist for any medical issues that he or she may be having.

Jessica: 27:00

This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast.

Rachel: 27:05

Thanks so much for listening