Moving It

Anita Mosher, Princess Margaret Secondary

I like a lot of movement in the class. I think we forget, it’s the movement, to me it’s relationships and movement. So having good relationships with students, building relationships with students and for the students with each other, but also moving. I think we forget as teachers that the student just came from another class where they just sat for 75 minutes. And they come to your class and they sit for 75 minutes. And we don’t like that, so why would we make them do that? And varying the activities is just so important. Okay, now enough of that, let’s move on to something else.

Lindsey Hamilton, Black Mountain Elementary

Like the brain needs oxygen and glucose to function at its highest level so we are constantly out of our desks, we’re constantly moving, we’re constantly playing music, playing games, we’re building a class atmosphere, you know we get moving in the morning, and you can see, one of the examples in the workshop I went to in the summer, they said, in a classroom where students never get out of their desks, if they do get out of their desks, it’s really hard to calm them back down, right, if they play a game, or they do some sort of activity, but we’re out of our desks probably every 20 minutes, they don’t really have any, like every day, oh my gosh! I can’t believe the day’s over. It went by so fast! Because we’re up and down and up and down and they’re right back on task and they’re doing their work because we do so many activities like that, so, yeah. It’s good.

Jessica Bernhardt, Pineridge Elementary

It gets them moving, so that they can move around, they can talk, they’re doing all sorts of things at the same time, it’s not just one sort of type of work, so if they do need to move around a little bit they can, they’re getting up and walking, they’re moving things with their fingers, so they can, you know, use different skills at the same time.

Jeff Fitton, Skaha Lake Middle

We’ve been trying to incorporate innovative practice into our instruction. Trying to incorporate movement, making sure that kids are going to enjoy, you know I remember a teaching colleague who told me, teaching can’t always be fun, Jeff, you just have to realize that. And I disagreed with him, I said I think no matter what you do, the resources you choose, the assignments you choose, the activities you choose, kids can enjoy it. Right?

Melissa Berrisford, Princess Margaret Secondary

I think it adds another element for the students, that it’s not just from the textbook, they are actually applying it. And it’s that movement, it’s a change of, we move from the classroom to the library, just even that spatial change helps for some students, we try to reach a diversity of students.