Movement Based Classroom Teaching

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Today I thought we would talk about a teaching strategy. This strategy is particularly effective for early childhood and primary school teachers, as well as teachers who have students with ADD and ADHD or strong sensory preferences for movement. 

Episode Transcript

Penelope Webb (00:05):
Welcome to The Exceptional Humans Podcast,
where we discuss questionsrelated to language, identity,
education, and behavior.
I'm your host, Penelope and Ihave a background in education,
linguistics, and behavioralscience.
Welcome to another UnscriptedStrategies discussion.
Today I thought we would talkabout a teaching strategy.

(00:27):
This strategy is particularlyeffective for early childhood
and primary school teachers, aswell as teachers who have
students with ADD and ADHD orstrong sensory preferences for
movement.

(00:47):
This strategy incorporates a fewdifferent hits, high impact
teaching strategies and I referto it as the bounce strategy.
So for this strategy, what youare doing is you are utilizing

(01:08):
movement, the ability forstudents to engage in social
interactions with their peersand chunking.
It also allows teaching staff,teacher aids, whoever is in the
classroom within a instructionalcapacity to move around the room

(01:31):
and check in with individualstudents.
So for this strategy, what youdo is generally get students
moving between two spaces in theclassroom.
So for this, say you've got acarpeted area in front of a

(01:54):
whiteboard or a smart board,where you are presenting
material and instructions, andthen you have the students'
individual workspaces, whetherthat is group desks, whether
that is individual desks or aless structured seating or
standing environment.

(02:14):
What you then do is you breakdown each set of instructions
and task component and presentthem individually.
So for this, say you are doing awriting task and you want the

(02:36):
students to start the writingtask by recording the date or
the title of the task, or alearning objective as the first
thing that they are going towrite in their books.
You would model writing thatinformation, either on a
whiteboard or a smartboard, andthen bring up a digital timer.

(03:01):
I really like radial countdowntimers or timers that present a
countdown clock with a restfulimage and some background music.
I've found both to be veryeffective depending on time of
day.
Radial timers tend to work on asense of urgency, so if it's

(03:25):
after lunch where everybody'sslowing down a bit, everybody's
feeling a bit sleepy, a radialtimer can work really nicely
because there's a sense ofurgency, so it hypes everybody
up a little bit more.
However, for the start of theday where everybody is pretty
awake, got a fair bit of energy,something like a countdown timer

(03:47):
with a little picture of arainforest and some nature
sounds, can be really good atjust keeping that energy nice
and calm and maintaining pace.
Then you model what you'reexpecting students to do writing

(04:09):
the date, writing a title,writing a learning objective.
You tell them how much timethey've got, I usually work in
one, two, or five minute chunks,and you start the timer and off
they go.
Again this allows students to goand record that information, but

(04:33):
also if they want to then comeback to the carpet and they want
to have a little chat to theirfriends while they're waiting
for everyone else to finish up,it allows for that.
It allows those students thatreally need to access movement
to do that within thattimeframe.
It also allows for you to goaround and individually help

(04:54):
students, particularly studentsthat may have issues with
manipulating pencils ormaintaining pencil grip or
anything along those lines.
It allows you to go and assistthose students.
It also allows you to check thateverybody has followed through
on that instruction.

(05:14):
From there, you continue tobreak down the tasks into bigger
and bigger chunks with increasedtask complexity and increasing
the number of instructions froma single instruction to multiple
instructions as you proceedthrough the activity.

(05:40):
Not only does this strategyprovide structure for students
who are neurodivergent,particularly those students who
have ADD and ADHD, it can alsohelp slow down those students

(06:01):
that rush their work and makesimple errors, particularly in
writing, as well as providingmotivation for those students
that often struggle to keep upwith their peers during extended
individual tasks.

(06:22):
The structure of the strategyalso allows teachers and other
adults assisting withinstruction to spend time
working with individual studentsor groups of students during the

(06:48):
session, which they may nototherwise get a chance to do.
It can also help classroomteachers with the pacing of
their day.
So particularly for early yearsand primary teachers, when you

(07:11):
have your class and you'representing multiple subjects
throughout a school day, it isquite important to change up the
pacing and the presentation ofthose sessions to keep students
engaged and minimize thepossibility that you are going
to get any behavioral issueshappening throughout the day.

(07:36):
I would love to know what youthink of this strategy, whether
you have ever tried a strategysimilar to this before, or you
would be willing to incorporateit into your teaching.
The Exceptional Humans Podcastis written and recorded on Kabi
Kabi and Jinibara lands.
We would like to pay ourrespects to their elders past,

(07:58):
present, and emerging, and payour respects to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanderpeoples listening today.