SOUTH BRUNSWICK – Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
Apparently, the solar system division appears quite early on in life.
The South Brunswick Parent Academy held a workshop on Nov. 30 at Crossroads North Middle School titled “The Minds of Boys: Strategies for Academic Success.”
Boys generate more dopamine in the brain and bloodstream, which will increase impulsive risk behaviors, making sitting still or being sedentary more difficult, said Nicole Pormilli, director of instructional support.
“Boys often are better when their bodies are moving and doing,” Pormilli said.
Therefore, since boys are better at spatial reasoning, gross motor skills, math reasoning, abstract reasoning and visual learning, they tend to need more space and movement in which to function while learning, Pormilli said.
For example, they tend to spread out more while doing homework, or figure out directions on their own instead of asking for help.
Some advice to help boys learn and produce better? They should toss a ball while studying to increase oxygen flow to the brain, pace while practicing a speech, listen to a book on an iPod while walking around, write words in the air to study spelling, stand up while reading or doing homework, act out a scene from a story or historical event, and take brain breaks from studying.
The use of visuals is important, too, such as pictures, graphs, and manipulatives to represent numbers and imagery. A visit to a real historical site or museum can also reinforce learning.
“It’s about trying to figure out where do they need their movement, when they can focus and when they cannot,” Pormilli said.
Jodi Mahoney, principal of Brooks Crossing Elementary School, said that boy brains don’t create as many words as girl brains do, so it’s harder for boys to talk and write as naturally about sensory details. She said they are better able to focus on one task rather than multi-task, and the fact that they have less developed fine-motor skills than girls makes it harder for them to physically write.
In order to help reading and writing development, Mahoney suggested using visual dictionaries with pictures; giving “reading gifts” to discover the genre, authors and types of literature a boy enjoys; playing word games; writing personal letters and emails to relatives; singing karaoke; reading the same books among parents and children; outlining a chapter before class; and using the closed captioning setting on the TV.
She also suggested speaking with children first, repeating what was said, and then having them write their ideas down on paper.
“The talking piece is key because with sensory detail, the amount they’re going to talk to you is more than they’re going to write,” she said.
In comparison, Assistant Superintendent Joanne Kerekes described how girls are more verbally fluent – able to communicate better, speak more clearly, speak more often with adults, maintain better eye contact and develop verbal skills one-and-a-half years in advance.
In contrast, boys tend to have more learning disabilities and are more likely to stutter than girls are. But, she said, boys are better with analogies, multiple-choice questions, coming to a quick decision, reporting more facts, and doing well on academic teams because of the competitive nature and necessity for a quick response.
As men, she said males have no difference in verbal intelligence, but many believe their verbal kills lag and therefore may never acquire a reading habit.
“As they grow, we find in adults there is no difference in verbal intelligence,” Kerekes said.
She said it is the parent’s job to promote verbal development by nudging boys from their natural instincts of spatial, mechanical and kinesthetic learning to more verbal learning.
To get them to speak, parents should begin with a topic of interest, use authentic humor, use movement, and challenge them to defend the source of their facts.
The assistant superintendent said that when an adult talks to a boy, they should ask cogent questions, paraphrase, not interrupt, allow rambling while being able to redirect the conversation and following where the topic of conversation goes.
“If you have a boy who is reticent to speak and get him going … don’t jump in, clarify or restate,” she said. “Just acknowledge him and let him go.”
The South Brunswick Parent Academy is a partnership between Every Person Influences Children [EPIC] and the South Brunswick school district, and is funded in part by a grant from the South Brunswick Municipal Alliance Against Substance Abuse and the New Jersey Governor’s Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.
Upcoming workshops are: Jan. 31, online resources available to students; Feb. 9, safeguarding children from bullying; March 9, the district’s reading curriculum; March 30, cultural changes in South Brunswick; and April 26, dealing with the transitions facing middle school students. All workshops run from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Crossroads North, 635 Georges Road.
For more information contact Christine Mariano at [email protected].
Contact Jennifer Amato at