Incorporating Movement into your lessons

Here’s a confession – I get bored easily. Teaching the same content 5 times a day (for 37 years) is boring. So I shake it up a little by adding movement into my middle school science lessons. It gives me entertainment, engages the kids, and gives us all a little brain break.

Why incorporate movement?

If you need convincing that allowing your 11-14 year olds time to get up and move is good for you and good for them, here are my top 5reasons:

1. Movement boosts engagement by breaking up the monotony of seated learning and helps keep students more focused and involved.
2. Movement enhances retention. Physical activity improves circulation which strengthens neural connections and makes it easier for kids to focus and remember concepts.
3. Movement supports different learning styles. Kinesthetic learners have a very difficult time with seated learner. It’s important to include them in your lesson planning too.
4. Movement improves classroom behavior. Students are less likely to become restless and distracted and therefore less likely to become disruptive.
5. Movement makes learning more fun! When students associate science class with enjoyable activities, they’re more likely to stay curious and engaged.

5 Movement Based Activities

Here are some movement based activities you can try this week!

Charades. Have students act out vocabulary terms for a quick brain break.

4 Corners. Label each of the corners of your classroom with the letters A through D and then ask a multiple choice question, asking students to move to the correct corner.

Walk and Talk. Instead of think-pair-share, having student pair up and walk around the room explaining a concept to each other.

Stations. Set up different stations around the room for students to explore concepts with hands on activities, mini-experiments, or review questions.

Gallery Walks. Introduce or reinforce a concept with photographs around the room such as graphs of climate change data or images of water pollution.

How do you get your kiddos up and around?