Movement in the Classroom
Last week at the Discovery ILC meeting, we read an article by Alexis Wiggins about her experience of shadowing two different students for two different days and her takeaways. Here is the article.
After reading it, Wiggins’s first takeaway that “Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting” struck a chord with me. Following her first day of shadowing she remarked,
I could not believe how tired I was after the first day. I literally sat down the entire day, except for walking to and from classes. We forget as teachers, because we are on our feet a lot – in front of the board, pacing as we speak, circling around the room to check on student work, sitting, standing, kneeling down to chat with a student as she works through a difficult problem...we move a lot.
Curious to learn more, I stumbled upon this article by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers who assert that giving students opportunity for physical movement during class not only avoids students from feeling lethargic, but also allows them to be more focused and show more on-task behaviors.
As a World Language teacher, I’ve been prone to have lots of different activities throughout each class period. It’s part of World Language curriculum. The students have become accustomed to switching between various kinds of activities; however, with the integration of technology into the curriculum, I realize that much of the changing of activities was mental and not as frequently was it physical. That night, I looked at my lesson plan for the next day and changed up some activities to make sure that the students would need to physically move around more. Sometimes it was as simple as rearranging the order of activities so that there would be a sedentary activity followed by an active one; sometimes I had to change the activity significantly so it would still meet the learning target and that the physical activity would serve a purpose.
And the lesson was great. The students seemed more alert and some students even seemed chattier than normal (and in this case the positive version of “chatty”). I was happy and it was a good reminder to me to remember to be cognizant of physical movement every day.
The next day, I had the pleasure of hanging out with one of Denise Chapman’s sophomore World History classes. During the time that I was there, the students were engaged in a Visual Walkabout. Denise, a teacher leader in the Discovery Ed cohort, had learned about this strategy last week through the Discovery Ed Spotlight on Strategies.
To prep for the activity, Denise found 11 primary and secondary sources about World War I. She hung them on a large Post-it poster and then drew a T-chart with the words “Connection” on the left side and “Question” on the right side. She explained to the students that for the connection side, the students were to write down any connection that they could make between the source and something that they had learned in class or that they knew previously. For the question side, the students were encouraged to either write a question that they had after previewing the source or the write a “test-style” question about the source. The students walked around the room in pairs writing their connections and questions. Denise also circulated around the room to help answer questions and to encourage the students to dig deeper in their thinking.
In the end, students were talking with each other, analyzing primary and secondary sources, making connections, and moving. This activity could have been done in a variety of other ways that would have been sedentary, but adding the physical movement added to the experience and helped avoid what Wiggins calls that “icky, lethargic tired feeling” that she had felt when shadowing. Awesome.
Here’s a question for you: what activities or strategies do you use in your class to elicit physical movement from your students? Share in the comments section below!
To learn more about the Visual Walkabout, click here. Please remember that in order to access the Discovery Ed resources, you will need to login using your District 214 credentials.
As always if you have something that you would like us to highlight in the blog or you would like to guest blog, please let us know!
After reading it, Wiggins’s first takeaway that “Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting” struck a chord with me. Following her first day of shadowing she remarked,
I could not believe how tired I was after the first day. I literally sat down the entire day, except for walking to and from classes. We forget as teachers, because we are on our feet a lot – in front of the board, pacing as we speak, circling around the room to check on student work, sitting, standing, kneeling down to chat with a student as she works through a difficult problem...we move a lot.
Curious to learn more, I stumbled upon this article by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers who assert that giving students opportunity for physical movement during class not only avoids students from feeling lethargic, but also allows them to be more focused and show more on-task behaviors.
As a World Language teacher, I’ve been prone to have lots of different activities throughout each class period. It’s part of World Language curriculum. The students have become accustomed to switching between various kinds of activities; however, with the integration of technology into the curriculum, I realize that much of the changing of activities was mental and not as frequently was it physical. That night, I looked at my lesson plan for the next day and changed up some activities to make sure that the students would need to physically move around more. Sometimes it was as simple as rearranging the order of activities so that there would be a sedentary activity followed by an active one; sometimes I had to change the activity significantly so it would still meet the learning target and that the physical activity would serve a purpose.
And the lesson was great. The students seemed more alert and some students even seemed chattier than normal (and in this case the positive version of “chatty”). I was happy and it was a good reminder to me to remember to be cognizant of physical movement every day.
The next day, I had the pleasure of hanging out with one of Denise Chapman’s sophomore World History classes. During the time that I was there, the students were engaged in a Visual Walkabout. Denise, a teacher leader in the Discovery Ed cohort, had learned about this strategy last week through the Discovery Ed Spotlight on Strategies.
To prep for the activity, Denise found 11 primary and secondary sources about World War I. She hung them on a large Post-it poster and then drew a T-chart with the words “Connection” on the left side and “Question” on the right side. She explained to the students that for the connection side, the students were to write down any connection that they could make between the source and something that they had learned in class or that they knew previously. For the question side, the students were encouraged to either write a question that they had after previewing the source or the write a “test-style” question about the source. The students walked around the room in pairs writing their connections and questions. Denise also circulated around the room to help answer questions and to encourage the students to dig deeper in their thinking.
In the end, students were talking with each other, analyzing primary and secondary sources, making connections, and moving. This activity could have been done in a variety of other ways that would have been sedentary, but adding the physical movement added to the experience and helped avoid what Wiggins calls that “icky, lethargic tired feeling” that she had felt when shadowing. Awesome.
Here’s a question for you: what activities or strategies do you use in your class to elicit physical movement from your students? Share in the comments section below!
To learn more about the Visual Walkabout, click here. Please remember that in order to access the Discovery Ed resources, you will need to login using your District 214 credentials.
As always if you have something that you would like us to highlight in the blog or you would like to guest blog, please let us know!
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