Smart Moves

One of the biggest things I get out of going to teacher workshops is the realization of why my 7th period students can never sit still.  Chairs become very hard after 6-8 hours, and no matter how engaging the speaker is, or how motivated I am to learn the material, I have a limit for stillness.  Why would I expect middle schoolers to be any different.

However, as educators, we are given only so much time to teach our kids and there is a huge amount of what I refer to as, hard skills that must be taught.  I am also obligated to teach the same material to 7th period that I taught to 1st.  Before I discuss how to work around this problem, here is how I break things into hard and soft skills. 

Hard Skills:  Hand wiring, spelling, facts, lab procedures, notes, basic math facts, formulas, test taking...
Soft Skills:  conflict, sharing of materials, critical thinking, problem solving, attentiveness, balance, volume control, staying on task...

Without soft skills, it is much harder for students to master the hard skills. I cannot get to a meaningful lab conclusion, if my students cannot share materials, or work cooperatively to solve a problem. Yet, as teachers, students, and professionals, we are typically judged and evaluated only on hard skills.  So, what do we focus our time and energy on for the few precious hours that we have a captive audience?  The facts, the rules, the tangible and measurable skills.  The unfortunate reality of hyper focusing on hard skills is that many of our kids lack a well rounded foundation in the soft skills, need remediation or practice in this area, or were exposed to such skills prior to being emotionally, intellectually or physically mature enough to process the skill. 

I am constantly finding myself looking for new and interesting covert ways to embed physical activities in my student's (and my own home schooled children's) day that promote attentiveness, cooperation and emotional control.  Last year I read a phenomenal and quite influential book entitled Smart Moves:  Learning is not all in the Head by Carla Hannford PhD.  She discusses, in a palatable way, brain and nervous system physiology and how movement activities (brain gym) can fill in many of the perceived gaps and deficiencies in student achievement. 

If you are like me, a middle school teacher, where kids have little movement in their day;  or a parent of young kids; or an elementary school teacher who is dealing with your recess times getting shorter and shorter... I highly recommend checking this book out and giving some of the activities a try.  It has helped me to identify learning styles, brain hemisphere dominance, major developmental milestones, and a more realistic spectrum of development rather than strictly a numerical age approach to expectations. 

I do not have any personal connection or affiliation with this author, but I am thankful for the book and how her research and methods are helping my personal children and my students. 

Happy reading!

Helpful links for those who want to know more:
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Moves-Learning-Your-Head/dp/0915556375
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Brain%20Gym
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gBPP1ZibE