Rationale:
The reason that I chose movement in the classroom as my Inquiry Project was to find ways to get my students moving in the classroom. Sometimes when they had been sitting for awhile, they lost focus on started to fidget and be distracted by their surroundings and distract their peers. A simple solution was to get them moving and they would refocus and we could continue with the lesson.
Also, an initiative that the school is currently working on is Health and Wellness. The program promotes a healthy and active lifestyle by getting in exercise and moving time as well as eating healthy. I thought it would be a great way for me to explore how I could model a healthy and active lifestyle with my students in the classroom. They could learn ways that they could be active.
One of my teacher mentor's professional goal this year was to implement more physical activity in the classroom. She wanted to make the classroom a fun space where students were moving and learning at the same time. I saw within my first few days, the simple things she was doing to get her students to move such as cheering their word wall words by exercises for each letter. Students were learning and moving at the same time which they enjoyed.
The main purpose is to get students moving somehow throughout the lesson. I found a simple way to get students moving was to chunk the lesson with getting them to transition and move throughout the class. They get more learning accomplished and I was happy that students were learning and not just fidgeting.
For the research portion, I researched the benefits of movement in the classroom. With the information, I analyzed to see if brain breaks should the similar benefits in my classroom. I saw that the benefits were visible in my classroom, students enjoy learning and were learning better.
Many of the brain breaks and movement activities were ones that we used in my classroom and throughout the school.
Through out my research and exploring different ideas in the classroom, I realized that different movements can be utilized as well such as turn and talks. Not all physical movements have to be brain breaks, where the entire class moves together. The goal is to have your students move frequently as stimulates brain activity and helps students to refocus on keep working on task.