Some of the smartest things teachers can do are the simplest. When we keep students active, we keep their energy levels up and provide their brains with the oxygen-rich blood needed for highest performance. Teachers who insist that students remain seated during the entire class period are not promoting optimal conditions for learning.
Educators should purposefully integrate movement activities into everyday learning: not just hands-on classroom activities, but also daily stretching, walks, dance, drama, seat-changing, energizers, and physical education. The whole notion of using only logical thinking in, for example, a mathematics class flies in the face of current brain research. In fact, Larry Abraham in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Texas-Austin says, "Classroom teachers should have kids move for the same reason that P.E. teachers have had kids count" (personal communication, 1997).
Brain-compatible learning means that educators should weave math, geography, social skills, role-play, science, and physical education together, along with movement, drama, and the arts. Don't wait for a special event. Here are examples of easy-to-use strategies.
Goal setting on the move. Start class with an activity in which everyone pairs up. Students can mime their goals or convey them by playing charades with a partner, or the pairs can go for a short walk while setting goals. Ask students to answer three focusing questions, such as these:
- What are my goals for today and this year?
- What do I need to do today and this week in this class to reach my goals?
- Why is it important for me to reach my goals today?
You can invent other questions or ask students to create some of their own.
Drama and role-plays. Get your class used to daily or at least weekly role-plays. Have students play charades to review main ideas. Students can do an extemporaneous pantomime to dramatize a key point. Do one-minute commercials adapted from television to advertise upcoming content or to review past content.
Energizers. Energizer activities can (1) raise blood pressure and epinephrine levels among drowsy learners, (2) reduce restlessness among antsy learners, and (3) reinforce content. Use the body to measure things around the room and report the results. For example, "This cabinet is 99 knuckles long." Play a Simon Says game with built-in content: "Simon says point to the south. Simon says point to five different sources of information in this room." Do team jigsaw puzzles with huge, poster-sized mind maps. Have young students get up and move around the room, touching seven colors on seven different objects in a particular order. Teach a move-around system using memory cue words. For example, "Stand in the place in the room where we first learned about …"
Quick games. Use ball-toss games for review, vocabulary building, storytelling, or self-disclosure. Have students rewrite lyrics to familiar songs in pairs or as a team. The new words to the song can provide a content review. Then have the students perform the song with choreography. Get physical in other ways, too. Play a tug-of-war game in which everyone chooses a partner and a topic from a list of topics that every student has been learning about. Each person forms an opinion about his or her topic. The goal is for each student to convince a partner in 30 seconds why his or her topic is more important. After the verbal debate, the pairs form two teams for a giant tug of war for a physical challenge. All partners are on opposite sides.
Cross-laterals. Learn and use arm and leg crossover activities that can force both brain hemispheres to "talk" to each other better. "Pat your head and rub your belly" is an example of a crossover activity. Other examples include marching in place while patting opposite knees, patting yourself on the opposite shoulder, and touching opposite elbows or heels. Several books highlight these activities, including Sensorcises by Laurie Glazner and Smart Moves and The Dominance Factor by Carla Hannaford.
Stretching. To open class, or anytime that you and your students need more oxygen, get everyone up to do some slow stretching. Ask students to lead the whole group, or let teams do their own stretching. Allow learners more mobility in the classroom during specific times. Give them errands to do, make a jump rope available, or simply let them walk around the back of the classroom as long as they do not disturb other students.
Physical education and recess. Budget cuts often target physical education as "a frill." That's a shame, because, as we have seen, good evidence indicates that these activities make school interesting to many students, and they can help boost academic performance. We're not talking about going overboard with exercises. Thirty minutes a day, three to five days a week will do the job (Tomporowski, 2003). Any school that has problems at recess or with physical education should fix the problems, not throw out an important asset.
Teachers should also ensure that breaks include some movement—no standing around at recess time! Breaks can include fast walking, running, or high-energy play (McNaughten & Gabbard, 1993). The breaks must last for 30 or 40 minutes to maximize the cognitive effects (Gabbard & Shea, 1979). For breaks of that length, it may make sense to alternate highly challenging activities with more relaxing ones. A short recess arouses students and may leave them "hyper" and less able to concentrate. A longer break engages high energy, but it cannot be sustained. Thus, a more calm, restful state of relaxation should follow. This pattern allows the students to focus better on the task at hand. Breaks at midday and early afternoon provide a greater benefit to the students than an early morning recess (McNaughten & Gabbard, 1993). Because longer breaks are more valuable than shorter ones, timing may dictate that the midday break also be used for lunch.
