Movement as Motivation in Middle-Level ELA
By Mrs. Jessica Hill and Mrs. Abby Beukema
As teachers, we are up against seemingly insurmountable odds: capture short attention spans, prepare students for standardized tests, manage classroom behaviors, ensure all minds are engaged by appealing to a variety of modalities, and the list goes on and on. At Beaver Area Middle School, we have been focusing on adding a certain element to as many lessons and classroom routines as possible – movement. From what we have observed, movement increases interest, aids retention, and enhances classroom culture. Admittedly, increasing the amount of movement in our class periods was daunting at first, but the pay-off seems to be worth it.
The following are two ideas we have tried and found helpful in beating the aforementioned odds with our seventh and eighth grade learners:
Get Students Up and Moving with Vertical Features
Our ELA classes use a twist on one of Peter Liljedahl’s practices for what he calls a “thinking classroom.” We use vertical, non-permanent features such as whiteboards or interchangeable daily questions mounted around the room. Students meet in small groups to discuss questions, tasks, or images at these spaces to start the class period. Students typically return to their seats after this time more engaged and ready to learn.
Some logistics that have made this work for us:
- Many worksheets can be converted into questions hanging around the room. The students are given a paper on which they record answers. Typically, it is a template that has boxes indicating each station, additional prompts, and/or directions. Hanging on the wall is the question or additional information that they would need in order to complete the task on their paper.
- Flexible stations. 6 Stations hanging on the wall around the room may easily be converted to 3. Divide the room in half. The students on the right half of the room circulate through 3 stations on the right, and students on the left half of the room circulate through 3 stations on the left.
- Clipboards! Students put their papers on a clipboard to work as they move around the room.
- Adding whiteboards to your classroom decor can prove helpful in creating this up-and-moving collaborative learning environment. 6-10 whiteboards strategically positioned around the room allows students to answer questions, solve problems, and brainstorm ideas. The added bonus here is that an easily-erasable surface encourages students to make mistakes and revise as they discuss. While this tends to be a practice used in math classes, it is great for working with mentor sentences, prewriting, anticipation questions, and more. It is also a great classroom management tool! While a teacher takes attendance and prepares for class, students are moving and collaborating on something that helps hone their focus for the lesson to come.
After reading a text, students are asked to demonstrate their understanding by designing with 3D materials such as playdoh, foil, Legos, etc. For example, students could design something that represents the main conflict of a story. For more advanced students (or for a longer challenge), students could design a product that a character in the story could use to solve a problem.
Some logistics that have made design challenges work for us:
- Run timers for the 3 main segments of the design challenge:
1) Plan2) Build3) Share.During the “share” segment, students do a “gallery walk” to observe others’ designs and ideas.
- Give students a paper template to fill in while they plan their design. For example:
We designed ____. This represents the theme of the story because ___.This paper can become the placard displayed with their 3D model when it is time for the gallery walk.
