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Your children need to move! Movement has been shown to increase recall in learning, and engages all students in the curriculum. It helps students burn off excess energy and have the ability to focus on independent work when needed. Throughout our day, we build in movement activities that both give students an awareness of their body and help them retain information being taught. Read on for how movement is used throughout your child's day!
During the school day, students vacillate between the complete safety and the zone of uncertainty. Students are never allowed to be in extreme danger at school, and are monitored to make sure they make good choices to keep themselves safe.
The zone of uncertainty is the place where students can try and fail, and learn from these mistakes. Students are supported by their teachers to try new movements and given suggestions about how to solve problems in a way that creates new skills. This is mostly apparent during recess.
Students are in complete safety while in the school and classroom, where students are given directions on how to move their bodies in ways that support their emotional development. Teachers help students learn what their bodies are telling them and teach them movements that can help them regulate their feelings and bodies effectively.
Recess is generally a time for free play. Sometimes structured or directed play activities are offered. Unfortunately in the classroom, there are limited opportunities for students to play. Teachers try hard to incorporate different directed or structured play activities into the school day. These opportunities give students the chance to learn through movement and exploration.
Using this pie chart, you can think about your child's free time at home. Is 60ish% of their playtime spent completely free? Is the other 40% more structured (like board games, screen time, etc)?
Students in this classroom will generally get movement breaks to help transition from one block or learning period to another. Students have generally been sitting, focused and working for upwards of 15-20 minutes. These movement breaks might include videos that have the children do different movements as if in a video game, or to choose a particular answer to a variety of questions. Sometimes, we might do a screen-free break called the shake down where students shake each limb of their body for a certain number of seconds, which decrease in half every round until reaching 1 time each. Still other times, students may move around the classroom following teacher or another student's directions on how to move (tiptoe, stomp, jump, etc).
See below for some examples of our classroom movement breaks:
Still other movement activities that may be used in the classroom are tied to the curriculum. Teachers often find ways to weave movement into vocabulary instruction - movements are tied to the definition of the word to help embed its meaning in the child's memory. Teachers also use movement to help students understand scientific concepts, such as how quickly water molecules move when they are solid, liquid or gas or about how the moon and earth move around the sun.
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