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Keep 'Em Moving: Incorporating Movement Across the Curriculum

-Eric Jensen

THE bodies of children were not designed for sitting in a chair six hours a day. They were built for running, walking, crouching, squatting, touching. They were designed, especially in the elementary school years, to discover the world by moving around within it, bouncing against it, feeling themselves a part of it. Movement is extremely important to help both boys and girls learn, but can be especially urgent for many boys in a given classroom.

In today's classrooms, sitting is, unfortunately, the "activity" students are told to do the most. Oftentimes, we teachers "teach to the students' heads" and forget about everything from the shoulders down. Under tremendous pressure to cover more content in less time-with high-stakes testing just around the corner every year-it's natural for us to gravitate to what might seem like a "faster" means of imparting content. And sitting down isn't necessarily a bad thing. Reading, writing, listening, memorizing . . . all can happen while sitting.

But some things just can't happen. Some things can't be learned. Some children can't learn well without becoming a part of the learning process through movement. Many of these children are boys. Their bodies and brains are not wired to sit still as much as we might wish.

One wonderful development over the last two decades is the plethora of brain-based information available that supports the merits of letting kids move around as they learn. The key finding of this research can be summarized in one statement: grades and test scores will improve and discipline referrals to the principal will decrease when physical activity is integrated helpfully into a child's educational day. With the majority of discipline referrals falling on boys, adding more movement to learning can dramatically reduce the number of boys in line at the principal's office.

DID YOU KNOW? Learning Loves Movement!

Cells and chemicals throughout the body are stimulated when the body moves. This stimulation improves learning because learning that is paired with movement often anchors better in the procedural memory centers of the brain. The increased blood flow and oxygen to the brain, along with the release of neurotransmitters, help students to learn concepts and procedures better and to retain them longer. When the body is helping the brain to learn, the brain is less likely to forget what's been learned.

Movement can be important for all children, but boys' brains generally need more movement than girls' in order to learn the same material. This is true for boys (and very active girls) not only because of improvements in procedural memory, but also because of impulse-control improvement. For many young males, learning is impeded by discipline problems associated with their own lack of impulse control. "Sit still!" the teacher will cry, just hoping the boy will stop fidgeting. Allowing the kind of physical movement that we'll explore in this chapter actually stimulates the young boy's brain while helping him to self-manage impulsive behavior. Movement has to be guided by teachers with authority, of course, and in effective, not distracting ways.

What's our first clue that we might need to do more in our classes with physical movement? It will most probably appear in the behavior of our students. If we see five or more of them fidgeting, zoning out, missing out on directions (because they are zoning out), and even getting into trouble, we probably have not integrated enough physical movement into their learning.

Brain-Body Connections for Learning

First-grade teacher Sophie Trujillo-Schrock incorporates movement every day across her curriculum. "I greet the students with music playing," she reports. "The music I choose to play depends on the unit of study. The music plays while students unpack their backpacks, sign in for lunch, and they move to the beat all the way to our meeting area on the floor. Currently, I'm playing a lot of jazz and Mardi Gras music because we're studying New Orleans. We also practice our calendar skills by clapping and stomping through the days of the week. We read a poem daily and we do a'syllable stomp' to count the number of syllables in each word. Sometimes, I have a student stand on a desk so that others can see his feet stomping to the count of the syllables. My kids love to learn this way and, most important, they do learn. They retain and accomplish much more than they did before I started this practice."

Sophie's wisdom of practice resonates with brain research, helping both the girls and boys in her class. Let's go deeper into that research and look at why the physical movement (and the music used to stimulate and guide it) works for kids' brains.

Improving Synaptic Connections

When kids move around, neural pathways develop and brain cells connect. When you see babies and young children-beginning at birth-stretching, rolling, running, spinning, swinging, climbing, pushing, and pulling, you are seeing human nature utilizing movement to build neural highways in the brain. Sophie's movement activities fulfill the call of the natural brain-especially a boy's brain-to increase cross-hemisphere connections to translate learning into language.

Developing the Corpus Callosum

As we learned in Chapter One, the corpus callosum is a relay station that sends electrical signals between the two hemispheres of the brain. The female brain has more neural connections in this relay station, but movement, especially cross-lateral movement, creates more healthy connections in this relay station for both boys and girls-and this is crucial to learning. As this brain center develops, integration of activity and insight from both hemispheres of the brain increase. This brings the whole brain to focus more actively on a particular learning task. Music, too, is a whole-brain activity, and when coupled with movement, it can be a positive factor in bringing the assets of both hemispheres to a task.

Improving Attention Spans

Physical movement stimulates curiosity and curiosity increases attention. Certain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, are associated with a pleasurable feeling and are stimulated by physical activity and novelty. All of these effects on the brain help a learning mind stay out of "zone out" rest states-improving note-taking, memorizing, listening, and learning. The increased dopamine can mean decreased impulsivity, thereby improving classroom behavior, especially for boys and some girls. Class becomes "fun" in a way that reduces trouble and improves learning.

Improving Learning Through More Circulation and Respiration

Movement increases the brain's ability to pay attention, solve problems, and retain information-not just because of stimulation to neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, but also because of increased blood flow and oxygen to the brain. Whereas the female brain naturally has a higher rate of blood flow in the brain, movement can help many boys to get their blood moving at an increased rate, helping with attention and focus. As movement increases heart rates, oxygen levels increase, making the brain more alert.

Decreasing Negative Stress

Some stress in life and learning is a good thing. The stress increase when taking an important test can actually help a child do better on the test. At the same time, certain stressors decrease learning ability. This "negative stress"-for instance, the stress that comes from being constantly reprimanded-is reduced by physical movement. Sometimes teachers will ask us, "But how can that be? If kids are moving around, won't teachers be constantly yelling at them because of classroom chaos? Won't aggressiveness and impulsivity just increase?"

In fact, ten years of action research conducted in over a thousand schools shows just the opposite. As long as the teacher lays out ground rules for movement, and enforces consequences when kids abuse the privilege, movement actually reduces aggression, decreases boredom (and the ensuing acting out), motivates learning, and decreases both students' avoidance of learning and their fears that they can't learn.

And sometimes, movement activities result in spontaneous laughter-a stress reducer in itself.

Wisdom of Practice: Teachers Talking

The use of physical movement to enhance learning is age-old, of course, but also newly discovered in each generation of teachers. When teachers talk about utilizing movement, some will say, "Hey, when I was a student, we just sat and memorized." Then another teacher will reply, "Yes, but we had a lot of recess, and we also spent a lot more time outdoors as kids than kids do now. We moved around more during any given day." Some teachers will feel a little bit intimidated about using movement. "I can't do it," they might say. "It will disrupt learning."

Physical movement is a best practice that not every teacher can or may want to jump into right away. You as a teacher may want to get mentoring and training in how to introduce movement to your classroom; you may want to team up with others who have successfully done so.

Here are three wonderful voices of support for all of us. These teachers are using physical movement, and their students are reaping the rewards.

Second-grade teacher...