September 17, 2012 Lesson 2 - Travel/Stop

Welcome back! WOW, Week two was just as fun and amazing as week 1!

The first thing I do when I get to school is set my gym up. Setting up the equipment for this lesson took about 10 minutes, if you are using a PowerPoint or projector add another 10 minutes for the technology set up.  I use PowerPoint in my lessons to provide examples for the visual learners in my class.  Studies show us that 85% of our children are kinesthetic learners. (Hannaford)  That means they learn best by moving their bodies.  The next most relied on sense for learning is visual, followed by a small group, 3% of learners who rely mainly on auditory to learn. Follow this link to some great information and facts regarding exercise and the brain.
Does Exercise Improve Learning in Children?

Set-Up for Lesson 2 - Travel/Stop 

Today, I only put boundary signs up on half the cones, every other one.  I want the children to begin associating the cone with the boundary.  When it did come up with the children that the signs were not on all the cones,  I explained that the cones marked our boundary, whether it had a sign or not.  Most of the children understood that.

I put out the all the equipment we would use for the day.  I explained to the class the week before that the equipment will be out around the boundary lines, and they should only play with it when they are given the directions to use it.  As I reviewed the lesson, I noticed the only time children touched the equipment before our game was in the event they crossed out of bounds and accidentally kicked the equipment.

After I finished setting up, I went into the classroom to check in with the classroom teachers.  I found out that they used the boundary signs during the fire drills and on the playground to mark areas that were out of bounds!  The teachers also taught lesson 1 on Thursday and Friday again.  The children at school don't all attend full time, so teaching the lesson on three days of the week insures that all the children got the basic movement experience and new vocabulary.  The ones that participated all three times seemed to have as much fun each time they came to the gym for movement, regardless of the fact that they did the lesson before.  It is a great idea to repeat a lesson a couple times during the week.  You can even teach it each day, changing the song for follow the leader, or changing the concept from "Mess-up/Clean-up" to "Rainbow/Tornado" or even "Rain/Evaporation"!  It's OK to repeat activities and information.  We know from brain science that it is important to;  Repeat to Remember - Brain Rule #5  check out John Medina's book Brain Rules for more brain facts.

When the children began moving, it was obvious that they had practiced moving inside the boundaries, there were only a handful of times that anyone went out of the boundaries during our lesson.  I didn't ask children specifically to come back into the boundaries.  I was able to use positive behavior cues to demonstrate the behavior I wanted. By choosing the children following the directions or demonstrating the skill or concept, you can give specific  compliments to those students which will also provide a visual and verbal example for those who are not on task.  Catch the children doing what you want!

My time goal, getting the class to move within a minute of coming into the gym was almost met!  Last week it was almost 4 minutes before we started moving, this week we were up and moving within 2 minutes!  Next week I'm going to begin the class with the children standing.  During lessons one and two, the children only sat two times, in the beginning of the class and during stretching/review.  Frankly, after reviewing the video, the children were focused for everything except the review, which we did seated!  Check out this article; ADHD Students: Get on the Ball, for more information about engaging the core and focus.  Next week, I'll begin the lesson standing, and finish the lesson standing for the review.  I'll let you know how it goes. :)

We began with a seated review of the concepts and words from last week; Boundary, My name, The Safe Rule, and equipment (cones, spots, bean bags and teddy balls).  Within 2 and half minutes we were up walking around to the boundaries.  We stopped at cones and spots, identifying the equipment and the boundaries.  I was really excited that as the children moved around the boundaries, they did NOT touch the equipment on the spots!  We finished moving around the boundaries in about 3 minutes.  We traveled as a class around, inside the boundaries to a song from the curriculum called "Leader in the Boundaries".  The children followed me around inside the boundaries as we all pretended to fly, move in the ocean and travel like forest creatures!

Color Matching during "Clean-Up/Mess-Up

When the song ended, the children stayed in their space and listened as I explained that they were going to play clean-up/mess-up.  Today I added the element of matching the color.  I asked the children to match the garbage to the spot by color as they cleaned up.  The teachers and I were able to formatively assess the children's ability to match color and, by asking them questions, to identify color!  After playing clean-up/mess-up for about 4 minutes, I introduced the activity, "Rainbow/Tornado".  I took an extra minute to talk about rainbows and tornado's because the class had not been introduced to the two concepts.  During our discussion, one of the children commented that when tornado's travel, they spin!  We had few spinning tornadoes after that! We continued, playing Rainbow/Tornado for about 5 minutes.  The children were engaged and active the entire time.  Again, we did NOT sit for new directions, I asked the children to stop where they were and listen.  I noticed one child who was perpetually in motion, even when I spoke.  He followed the directions and stayed on task during the activities.  I decided not to insist he stay still, because it wasn't distracting other children and he was clearly listening, even though he was moving!  We actually practiced the skill of listening while moving when we played the final version of "Rainbow/Tornado".  As the children were assuming the role of either rainbow or tornado, I called out, without stopping the class first, the opposite role.  The children stopped what they were doing and switched roles.  They did an amazing job listening while they played.  I told them so!  Make sure you point out when the children do what you expect.  This gives them a "Warm-Fuzzie" a happy feeling of knowing you've done something great! A boost of self-esteem. It also shows the other children what you are expecting.

Watching the Travel/Stop animation

 We moved onto the "Instruction" portion of the lesson after about 15 minutes of review and warm-up.  With everyone standing near the screen, I introduced Travel/Stop.  First with a verbal description accompanied by a visual animated demonstration of children traveling and stopping within the boundaries. 

You can watch the animation I created for the PowerPoint, the same one the children are watching. Just click the play button.  They are easy to make, email me and I'll send you instructions.

 

I showed the children two visual symbols; a stop sign to represent stop or freeze and a round green spot with the word "go" inside to represent go.  I use a computer remote to advance my PowerPoint slides.  I switch back and forth between stop and go to match my command.  This provides a visual cue for my visual learners.  We also discussed watching other people in the boundaries.  Looking to avoid them and as a cue to know whether to go or stop!

Scaffold in prior experiences and knowledge to help teach new concepts. 

We discussed the idea of traveling in the boundaries and stopping on cue and then looking at me, for about one and a half minutes.

As the children traveled around, I encouraged them to look for "open spaces" and places where "no one else was traveling" inside the boundaries.  After the class had been traveling for about a minute and a half, with my verbal cues and visual cues to travel and stop or freeze, the children were traveling spread out and staying in the boundaries.  I was really impressed with how quickly they grasped the stopping and looking at me.  I did reinforce it as much as possible, to keep the focus on the importance of stopping when I said stop or freeze.  I know that my verbal cues; look for open spaces, or travel where no one else is, and the teachers participating, helped provide an example for the children to mimic or emulate.Next week we will practice traveling and stopping with equipment!

I continued to give them more responsibility by challenging them to find different ways to travel each time they began traveling after freezing.  I described the different ways I saw the children moving as they moved around inside the boundaries.  Sometimes I described traveling that I wanted to see, but no one had tried yet.  :)

Traveling to open spaces, away from other people.

Three minutes after we began traveling and stopping, I differentiated the task by using music as the cue to move and freeze with.  When the music was playing, the children moved; when the music stopped, the children froze and looked for me.  I used music notes to symbolize music and an x through it to symbolize no music.  I realize now, that I can use the symbol for no, a circle with a line through it, which would be closer to their real life experience.  I'll fix that for next week.  For 5 minutes they traveled and stopped to music, stopping when the music stopped and moving when it played again.  They did such a great job listening, I told them they were going to have to listen that good all the time now that we know they can!

I differentiated the activity one more time, using only the stop sign and the go sign to indicate when the children were to travel or freeze.  I have to say, they did a marvelous job for another two minutes. I was so excited that they were able to focus for the whole lesson and demonstrate traveling safely and move to open spaces.  The used a variety of ways to travel and verbally described the words and concepts that we worked on for the day; Tornado/Rainbow, Travel/Stop, Boundaries, Cones, Spots, Bean Bags, and Teddy Balls. The children were ready to stretch and review! 

We sat down to stretch, and one of the children commented that we had done the stretches last week!  I was so happy they remembered.  We did the same three stretches as the first week.  After we finished stretching, I reviewed the basic concepts with the children.

1. What did you do you heard stop or saw the stop sign? Stop.
2. Where is it safe to travel in movement class?  Inside the boundaries.  

A couple of the children answered the questions out loud.  In order to use this as a formative assessment tool, I need all the children to respond.  I would like to incorporate some pair share during the review, encouraging everyone to verbalize the concepts. I'll try that next week during the review.

Like I said earlier, the only time, it seemed, that the children were not focusing as well was during the review while they were all seated.  I am going to do the review standing up next week.  I think it will be a way to get them ready to go back to the classroom.  

At the conclusion of the lesson and review, I asked the children to help me clean up the equipment we used for the day.  They did, safely and quickly.  I can see that giving them tasks and problems to solve, having clear expectations of behavior,  helps instill personal and social responsibility.  They did a fabulous job helping me put away the equipment!

Below is my complete power point as a movie.You can watch it to get an idea of how I present the concepts to the children.  The music I use in my lessons and the animations are all in tact.  If you put the slide show on full screen, you could pause and play to use it as a visual and audio resource for your children. 

Next Up: Lesson 2.5

More practice with Travel/Stop and Boundaries.  We will practice stopping and moving with and around equipment.  

September 10, 2012 Lesson 1 Boundaries

Wow, first off, what a great time, I am so excited to be working with my new students and faculty.  My school does not segregate the children by age, however I initially was going to teach the classes as two groups; one group of 3 years and one group of 4-5 years.  After discussing it with them and doing some personal research I realized the optimal situation for the children is to be in a mixed group.  Check out the article: Mixed-Age Groups in Early Childhood Education. ERIC Digest.  

As you read the feedback each week, please keep the grouping in mind.  If you are able to teach your children in mixed ages for movement you will find the lessons and the children's experience more successful as well.
 
The day started out great, my set up was smooth and easy.  I felt confident with my preparation. Now all I needed were the kids!

I put a boundary sign on each cone to reference with the children throughout the lesson.  The teachers are going to use the cones and boundary signs to reinforce where to walk and stand during their first few fire drills.  What a great way to carry the concepts into the school day. 


The children walked into the gym, quietly and tentatively, checking out the brightly colored equipment and a new person standing smack dab in the middle (Me!).  As they walked into the gym, I chose a student who was in the vicinity of where I wanted the group, pointed him out to the class and asked them to find a spot to sit near him, with enough space to be sitting without touching anyone else.  I also told the children that this would be the last time they would sit down until the end.

One of my goals this year is to infuse what I know from recent science into my teaching and lessons.  One interesting fact is that we focus better when our core is engaged.  So, standing when you are listening to direction will help you remember it better! I have always had my students sit when I was giving directions for more than a minute.  This year I am making an intentional point to give instruction to my students when they are standing.  I wasn't sure if it was going to work with 3-5 year olds, but WOW, it was awesome.  Not only did the children listen, it made me conscious of how long I was giving instruction, I didn't want to go on so long that they would loose focus because of that.  As I watched the lesson, I was pleased at the pace of the lesson and that the children were actively engaged in the entire lesson from start to finish.

One other fact that contributed to the amazing focus of the children was the cohesiveness and focus of their educators.  As I watched the video, I observed the teachers working one on one with students who needed more guidance. I even saw them play as a part of the class, being a great model.  Ultimately they were actively engaged and focused during the lesson which was an awesome example for the children.

I began by meeting the children in a group where I introduced myself and the reason they were in the gym with me.  I introduced the safety rule: Be Safe.  After we discussed being safe, I began introducing the first new pieces of equipment; Cone and Spot, along with the concept and word Boundary.

From the initial entrance into the gym through the introductions, myself, safety rule and boundary concept the total time was about 4 minutes.  Since this is the first day, the initial talk takes a little longer.  Next week, my goal will be to get moving within a minute from when the children get into the gym.  Much of the information you get from or give to the children can be while they are moving or in short 15-30 second bouts of stillness.  During these conversations, the children can stay in what ever space they are in, looking at you, standing up. 

We walked as a group around each of the four boundary lines.  As we passed each cone, I picked up the Boundary station card and asked them to tell me what it said.  I asked the names of the equipment as we would pass by and I also asked them to tell me the color of the cones and spots.  This is a great way to pre-assess your children's ability to identify colors.  We did all this while walking around the four boundary lines.  I also took opportunities to reinforce the behavior I wanted by pointing out children who were moving safely, staying inside the boundaries and when they would participate and answer the questions I was asking.  When I saw children moving outside the boundaries I found a child inside the boundaries and pointed out how great that was.  In most cases the children outside the boundaries came right back in!  It took us about 4 minutes to walk around the four boundaries, and when we got back to the beginning, I asked the children to follow me to a the various boundaries, cutting across the gym from side to side.  The goal was to stay inside the boundaries, as we moved from line to line, moving inside the space marked by the boundaries.

After a couple minutes of following me to the different boundaries, I showed the children a PowerPoint slide I made that has animated children moving on their own from one boundary line to another.  after we watched the animation, I asked the children to do the same thing, travel to the opposite boundary line, but stay inside the boundary, on their own, without me!  I followed behind, complimenting the children that got the the line first and stayed inside the boundaries.  I am still amazed at the difference in the physical response I see from the children to a direction when they are able to first watch it and hear how to do it before moving as opposed to only hearing it.  I find the visuals most helpful when they are able to loop and play while the children are moving, giving a continual visual example for the students that are predominately visual learners.

After the children demonstrated they could move from boundary line to boundary line, staying inside the boundaries and being safe, we moved on to the activity, "Follow the Leader".  I used the Disney song; Following the Leader, and looped it as we traveled around inside the boundaries.  The main intention of this activity was to move around room space, inside the boundaries.  I complimented the children who were moving safely, and staying in the boundaries.  I did not ask the children to do the same movement as me, just to follow me around inside the boundaries.  While we were traveling, one child fell and another stepped on his little finger.  :(  Once we determined that it was OK, I took that time to talk with the children about looking where you are going.  That is a part of being safe.  Happily, we didn't have any more falling during the lesson.  I led the children around for a minute, and then began choosing children to be the leader.  I was able to let 3 children lead.  After we had been playing follow the leader for 4 minutes I changed the activity.  Initially children asked if they were going to get a turn to be the leader, I explained that they would play the game again during the week and get more chances to lead, because we had another game to play!

It was time to introduce some toys, equipment that we get to play with.  Bean Bags and Teddy balls.  I explained the activity, we were going to clean up the gym.  I messed up the gym by putting the bean bags and teddy balls all around inside the boundaries.  I just threw everything out.  It was fast and easy to do and really made a mess! 

The children cleaned the mess and traveled to and from the boundary lines putting the mess on the spots.  They traveled safely and I was able to reinforce positive behavior by pointing out the students picking up one piece at a time and the ones who were staying inside the boundaries.  As soon as they cleaned everything up, I showed them a power point of an animated character picking up one piece of equipment carrying it into the boundaries and dropping on the ground.  I explained that throwing the equipment into the boundaries wasn't safe because it could hit someone.  Most of the equipment was carried to the boundaries!  As soon as the gym was a mess they cleaned it up again, moving to and from the boundaries, practicing staying inside the boundaries.

Once I saw the children were playing safely and got the general idea of the activity I differentiated the activity by adding an element of listening while moving.  As they messed up or cleaned up the gym, I called out the opposite activity at various intervals of time.  Which ever activity they were doing, they stopped and started the new activity.

We ended the activity by cleaning up the equipment and putting it away.  After putting the equipment away, we began stretching.  I asked the children to find a spot to sit down where they could put their legs in a "V" without touching anyone.  I explained why we were stretching; because after exercise our muscles shorten or shrink a little bit, stretching helps to relax and keep our muscles long and flexible, what stretching is; Relaxing and Lengthening the muscle, and how the muscle should feel as they stretch; A little pull on the muscle, but not pain.

We finished up with a quick review during which the children verbally described, why we have boundaries and what marked our boundaries.  

During the lesson activities, the children demonstrated a clear understanding of where the boundaries were, they traveled safely and verbally described what we did. During the lesson and the review, the children read the word boundary and identified new pieces of equipment; Cone, Spot, Bean Bag, and Teddy Balls. 

Below is the PowerPoint I used in movie form.  Each slide is 5 seconds long, with the exception of the music slides.  Those will play through the entirety of the song.  You can use the PowerPoint audio and animations with your children, and using the video in full screen mode, you can pause and play to advance the slides when you are ready. 

Next week, Lesson 2 - Travel/Stop.

Exercise Builds Better Brains... and Bodies

Welcome teachers, parents students, and everyone who has the ability to move and therefore learn and be healthy.  The main intention of this blog is to provide information, insights, tips and any updates regarding the 25 lessons I have written for Play With A Purpose; SuperMoves.

Over the course of this school year, I will be teaching the lessons as well as video taping them.  My hope is to provide a library of lesson feedback and video that the classroom teachers will be able to use when they teach movement.

In addition, each week I'll be collaborating with my awesome school family to create movement activities that can be used in the classroom to teach and reinforce classroom concepts and skills.  As we discover awesome ideas, I will pass those along to you here in this blog.


Website links, studies, videos and occasional words of wisdom will be passed on to you as I teach the lessons myself. My goal is to update the blog at least once per week.  Check back often and please send me anything pertaining to the topic you feel would be beneficial to know or see.

First up: Lesson 1 - Boundaries