I made some gestures up, but I also liked having the kids help me create the gesture so that it had more meaning.įor example, I had a motion for every letter sound and sight word so that when my kids were reading with me at the back table and forgot what sound the letter spelled or forgot a sight word, all I needed to do was the motion, which helped them remember. We used it all of the time in every subject. When you use gestures in the classroom, you’re helping to unlock your students’ minds and allow them to make important connections and memory aides as they associate a concept with a hand motion or movement. Using movement, like gestures, is like having the key that opens the lock to an important treasure. Kinesthetic learning is an important tool in any classroom. One of the ways I did this was by intentionally incorporating movement into our daily schedule, or I created educational classroom brain breaks.ĭoes this mean the classroom got loud sometimes? Yes! (and that was ok!) Did we have fun? Lots of fun! Were my kids learning? Absolutely! Were some of the activities we did a little unconventional? Maybe, but I was an outside-of-the-box kind of teacher, so that my students were actively involved in the learning process! Here are four of my favorite ways that I used to get my students up and moving on a regular basis: Gestures Much like with my morning work, I wanted it fun but educational. I purposely designed our instruction to engage my students in our learning. I guess not every teacher turns their classroom into an exercise class during math practice, but trust me, it works and is intentional. Classroom Brain Breaks That Scream “I’m Educational”
But this was one of our classroom brain breaks, and I was gonna see it through to the end. I laughed at her comment as my thighs screamed with the burn of doing nine jumps and nine squats for the number 99 after having already done quite a few numbers beforehand.