Many of us have believed for a long time, that there are a wide variety of learners in our classes.  And within that collection of students, there always seemed to be a few that would use any excuse to get up and move around the room.  Now, through the work of Howard Gardner and his research on the Seven Intelligences (or is it eight now?), we recognize those highly mobile students as kinesthetic learners.

Additional research in the area of brain physiology has helped us to recognize that exercise and movement ³juices up the brain, feeding it nutrients in the form of glucose, and increasing nerve connections-all of which makes it easier for kids of all ages to learn.²

Robert Sylwester, in his work A Celebration of Neurons, tells us that ³knowledge is retained longer if children connect not only aurally, but emotionally and physically to the material. Yet, many of us shy away from adding movement to our classrooms, worried about our lack of training or fearing that chaos may erupt.

Adding Movement to Lessons

Incorporating movement into your current lessons is not a daunting task.  Many topics lend themselves naturally to the addition of movement.  Sequencing tasks, for instance, can easily be altered to create a movement-oriented, cooperative group activity.  Teaching number sequences can incorporate kinesthetics by having small groups of students, (taking turns,) choose a number card from a pile, move to the front of the room and place it in the correct position in a number line on the floor.  (A variety of movement activities such as skipping, galloping, etc. can be introduced.) Spelling becomes a natural movement activity when students must earn letter cards by first creating the shape of the letter with their bodies, then work with other students to create words with the letters they¹ve earned.  Even vowel sounds have a movement connection when played as the classic Mother, May I?² game.  Students are allowed to take a giant step forward for each long vowel they hear the teacher say, and a tiny step forward for each short vowel sound. 

Planning Lessons that Contain Movement Experiences

Adding movement to your current lessons may be as easy as making a simple adjustment to the way you currently present the material.  Below is one model for use in adding kinesthetic to your lessons.

 Identify an Academic Objective, or choose a favorite lesson

Using your current curriculum, choose an objective or lesson that you feel especially comfortable teaching.

Ex;  Students will be able to combine two single digit numbers           

Identify basic concepts to emphasize.

Ex; Two even numbers will create another even

Find a Movement Match

Using your school¹s PE curriculum, find an objective that you feel comfortable teaching.  See additional possibilities for kinestheticconcepts in Figure One.

 Ex; Students will recognize basic body parts

 Students will balance on a variety of body part combinations

 Find a way that the objectives match

Ex; Students will place body parts inside a hoop (or circle) in order to exemplify the answer to their math question

Substitute, Vary or Create

  Take an activity that you already use and vary it

Ex; Board game versions of Tic Tac Toe become a kinesthetic experience when played with the kids as pieces!!

 When all else fails.... create a new activity!!

Try the Activity

Try a kinesthetic activity with your class!

Refine it

Watch to see if the game progresses as you expected

Ask for students suggestions

Use student input to make changes (if possible)

Figure One

Integrated Lessons

Here are a few examples of lessons that have been modified to create opportunities for kinesthetic the learners in your classroom.

Simon  

Grades: 1-8       

Equipment: Hoops  

Kinesthetic Opportunities: Springing, landing         

Academic Objectives: Sequencing     

Description  

Create small teams of players and give each team 3-4 hula hoops of differing colors.  The first player may jump, hop or leap into any hoop of his/her choice.   They must then jump out.  All players from the team follow in order.  The first player then repeats his/her first movement, and adds a second.  Again, all the rest follow in turn.  The leader continues until s/he has had a set number of turns (as designated by the teacher,) then another player begins the sequences. Challenge players to rearrange the hoops to make the sequences more  challenging.      

Nursery Rhyme

Grades: 2-6

Equipment: Nursery rhymes

Kinesthetic Opportunities: Space awareness                    

Academic Objectives: Language arts

Description

Print copies of favorite nursery rhymes, then cut them into phrases.  Place the phrases in a scattered manner all around on the floor.  On "Go!" small teams of players try to rebuild all of the rhymes as they are supposed to be.  Teams must work together to both recognize as well as sequence the rhymes.

Finally

Create a dialogue with your Physical Education teacher.  S/he may be able to give you some new ideas in the fine art of connecting movement to learning.  And, even better, have the PE teacher work to connect your academic content into his/her lessons at the same time you are incorporating movement into yours.  The result will be more well-rounded learners, as well as students who have experienced learning in more than one or two of the Seven Intelligences.    

Resources

Hancock, Lynnell, "Why Do Schools Flunk Biology?"  pg. 58, Newsweek, February 19, 1996

Sylwester, Robert, A Celebration of Neurons