Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Carla Hannaford says ―Movement is Mandatory for Learning‖. We hope our time
together will give you background to understand why your students need to
move, and some ways to provide for that within your regular curriculum and
setting.
Corpus Collosum
Vestibular System
Visual Processing
Vestibular-Ocular-Proprioceptive Triad:
So What?
Memory Mechanics
Memory Systems
What
Where
How
Now
Brain Basics
Neurotransmitters
Brain Gym
―Sometimes you feel half of the kids are with you and half are zoned out,‖ said
Rachel Parris, a third-year teacher in Greenville South Carolina. Adding
movement into her lessons, she observed that ―my lower-achieving kids, their
reading has gone up.‖ Dr. Reed has given us permission to share some of
movement suggestions offered on his website:
http://www.moveintheclassroom.com/
―In a typical school day Parris incorporates a movement game into her lessons at
least once.
‗They‘re cross-hemisphere, so that they‘re working both the right-side and the left
side of the brain,‘ she said about Brain Gym. ‗The kids love them and they can do
more afterward‘‖.
Adding movement to your classroom pays off. The ways to do it are unlimited.
Try some of these in your classroom…
Have ―fidget objects‖ available for students to use keeps muscles active
during listening or discussion activities.
Reed notes, ―With childhood obesity on the rise, educators are finding ways to
get kids moving to burn calories, to stay in shape, and to enhance their learning.
Here is a brief sample of ways to make movement a part of the regular
curriculum, not an ―add-on‖.
Some of the following come from Julian Reed, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Active
Education: Lessons for Integrating Physical Activity with Language Arts, Math,
Science and Social Studies (Novascience 2009)
Curriculum Areas:
Math
Balance while counting to an assigned number by 2‘s, 3‘s, 5‘s, 10‘s etc.
Act out math problems: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,
equations
Clapping rhythm for patterns
Count movements (hop, skip, leap, jump) into or out of a hoop in a minute
Measure perimeter in heel-toe steps around a marked circle or large area.
Experience Time: walk, balance, jump or jog for 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5
minutes.
Play hop scotch, then add or multiply the numbers
Science
Five Senses Stations: Partners take a card with a sensory picture or
message and deliver it to the appropriate station identifying the sense
involved.
Run in place, then check heart beat under the chin.
Solar System: Assign a sun and planet names to students, position them
in order and have them walk through their orbits, staying in position order
around the person named as the sun.
Make up rhyming songs and motions to recall bones in the skeleton,
chemical names, action within an atom.
Language Arts
Form the body into letter shapes
Do an alphabet dance
Class walk around letter signs, stop, everyone picks one up and identifies
something that begins with that letter or sound.
Create a pattern and a rhyme, matching it to a repeated movement
Act out prepositions
Vocabulary: one person acts out one of the assigned words while the
partner names it.
Art
Walk or run a pattern to express a line
Draw a motion after demonstrating it
Make shapes with the body
4|©Connections of the Heart LLC
www.OurBrainBuddies.com
Move It to Learn It © Sandra Sunquist Stanton NCC, LPC
Act out a feeling, then draw it, choosing colors to match feeling
Social Studies
Assign events to individual students, then have them line up as a timeline.
Act out a story or historical event
Reed says, ―Teachers have concrete evidence — improved grades and fewer
discipline problems — after implementing specific movement skills in their
classes.‖
Catherine Dillon, Greenville South Carolina ESOL program lead teacher said, ―It
never occurred to me… that you can get a person to learn much more easily
doing a relay race than in a lecture.‖
+++++
Chair less classrooms are helping students stay focused. Exercise (Stability)
Balls replace traditional chairs, reportedly improving student focus, posture and
fitness all at the same time. The topic came up during a Health Ed Network
seminar I presented in St. Louis "Educational Applications of Current
Neuroscience". It follows Carla Hannaford's observations in her classic book
Smart Moves-All Learning Is Not In Your Head. Movement is essential for
learning. Children's need for movement is based in the Vestibular System and
the "Triad" described in workshops by Mary Kawar MS, OTR. Consulting with
colleagues to further educate myself and answer participant's questions about
the Visual – Proprioceptive-Ocular Systems, I acknowledge Anne Yockey MS,
OTR for her guidance and professional resources in this search. She
recommends workshops by Mary Kawar, MS, OTR for more information on these
topics.
Visual Processing: Perfect 20/20 vision indicates only the clarity with which one
sees. The traditional eye chart does not reassure reading ability or visual
Vestibular System: This system balances all sensory systems; very important
for learning. It‘s located in the three semicircular canals of the inner ear.
Vestibular receptors are the tiny hair cells (cristae) within the semicircular canals,
the utricle and saccule of the vestibular labyrinth. From Sensory Integration:
Theory and Practice Fisher, Murray and Bundy 1991The cochlea, also in the
inner ear, takes care of hearing. Because it‘s surrounded by a liquid [paralymph]
also shared with the vestibular system, vestibular stimulation can also improve
hearing.
Bibliography:
Paul and Gail Dennison, Brain Gym, and Brain Gym, Teacher’s Edition Rev
Gurian, Boys and Girls Learn Differently
Carla Hannaford, Smart Moves: Why All Learning is Not in Your Head
Mary Kawar, M.O.R.E. Integrating the Mouth with Sensory and Postural
Functions- (Book and Video)
Mel Levine, A Mind at a Time
John Ratey, SPARK
Leonard Sax, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge (2010)
Spencer-Gorin, Learning to Play, Playing to Learn
The Secret Life of the Brain
Chip Wood, Yardsticks
Websites:
www.OurBrainBuddies.com, Connections of the Heart LLC (additional resources
listed on this site)
www.brainconnection.com Scientific American
www.braingym.org Edu-Kinesthetics
www.vitallinks.net Mary Kawar –Vestibular Habilitation, M.O.R.E.
www.wittfitt.com Lisa Witt - Stability balls-classroom chairs)
www.moveintheclassroom.com Julian Reed
www.whygendermatters.com Leonard Sax
www.johnratey.com/newsite/index.html John Ratey-SPARK
I appreciate your presence and participation in this workshop! Taking this time to
take care of yourself and sharpening your own tools will help them ultimately
reach their potential. You will never completely realize the tremendous impact
your work has for your students‘ lives, but I thank you for them.
Sandi