Brain-based Teaching Tip 2 – Move More, Learn More

Read the first tip in this series to learn the crucial role you play in helping your children succeed academically.

Continuing this blog series on brain-based teaching tips for your homeschool, here is Tip 2: Move More, Learn More. Your children’s brains are engaged more when they are moving.

Susan Griss in her article, The Power of Movement in Teaching and Learning describes three scenarios much like these:

1. You’re lecturing your kids about the American Revolution. You’re talking. They’re listening (you hope).
2. You and your children are having a joint discussion about the American Revolution.
3. Your kids are working together practicing a dramatization they’d planned of a scene from an exciting novel about the American Revolution, such as Johnny Tremain.

Ms. Griss then asks, how much brain activity do you think would be generated by each example?

Of course – the third one is going to generate much more brain activity. Why?

In the third example, your kids are moving.  They are engaged in every way– mentally, socially and physically. Of course, their brains are going to be firing on more cylinders!

Research shows that students learn more when they move more. There are a few different ways movement positively affects learning:

1. Movement gets more oxygen to the brain – that must be good for learning, right?
2. Frequent exercise helps kids “sit still and focus.”
3. Movement integrated into the subject being taught helps kids become more involved in and remember what they’re learning.

So, moving more prepares the brain to learn more effectively, moving more helps students focus, and moving more engages kids and helps cement learning.

Examples of movement to get more oxygen to the brain and help children focus

Your students need regular daily exercise AND they need to move frequently during the day.  This applies to your high schooler as well as your kindergarten student.  You think better when you have more oxygen to the brain.

So, break up periods of sitting regularly with any whole-body movement.  It may be as simple as these examples:

• have your kids stand by their chair every so often and do some jumping jacks.
• have them sit on an exercise ball instead of a chair to do their math lesson or written work.
• suggest your middle schooler play a little one-on-one basketball outside with your high schooler during a 20-minute mid-morning or mid-afternoon recess.
• Have a dance party in between subjects
• My favorite during our homeschooling years was to send someone having trouble focusing to run around the house a time or two. Or clean the baseboards.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Movement integrated into all subjects

Here are ways to easily incorporate more movement into different subject you’re teaching. The movement might be related to the subject or not:

• Do a mini-history lecture or listen to narrations while you’re walking.
• Also, while walking, have your student(s) practice skip-counting…. Count by twos, threes, fives… if you do this with your younger students you’ll be giving them a helpful start on multiplication tables coming in a couple of years.
• Incorporate movement into your math or spelling lesson. Stand in a circle with your students. You’re holding a ball. You start by saying a suitable math equation, such as ‘three plus four equals….?” (or announce a word to spell) and throw the ball to one of your kids.  If she answers the question correctly, she can come up with the next problem (or word to spell) and throw the ball to someone else. (You can do this with multiple ages — just customize the question like 3 x 4 =? instead of 3+ 4 = ? (or suggest a more difficult word to spell.)
• Have your kids “show you” how a character from a read-aloud might be feeling.
• Play charades trying to guess different people and events from a period of history.
• If you have a couple of students handy, act out a simple math word problem.
• Ask a student to show you the life-cycle of a butterfly or a frog.

It may take some out of the box thinking for you to get more movement into your learning, but this gives you a place to start.

I’ve given you some examples for math, spelling, history/literature and science.  What other ideas can you come up with to add movement into your learning?

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The post Brain-based Teaching Tip 2 – Move More, Learn More appeared first on Train up a Child Publishing.