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Student Centered Learning Strategies with Physical Movement
By Hu Yiyuan
By Ruairi O'Connor
How do people learn? Research has found that it is our learning process, not our intelligence, that is the most important factor in determining our abilities -- making it vitally important to examine how we teach our students. So we must ask: how are we most effective at learning and retaining information? Recently, multi-disciplinary learning has become the trend in education, allowing students to make connections between seemingly disparate subjects. The Kinesthetic learning takes this model to the next level by connecting the different ways in which we learn, and this process enables a more effective understanding and retention of information.
Neurosciences Research
There are three parts of our brains play the vital roles in skill learning. They are the basal ganglia, cerebral cortex and the cerebellum.
Basal Ganglia
The basal ganglia are a group of structures found deep within the cerebral hemispheres. The separate nuclei of the basal ganglia all have extensive roles of their own in the brain, but they also are interconnected with one another to form a network that is thought to be involved in a variety of cognitive, emotional, and movement-related functions. Thus, the basal ganglia are best-known, for their role in movement also thought to have roles in habitual behavior, emotion, and cognition. The basal ganglia receive information from other parts of the brain and interpret information then send it on a path to the thalamus and the brainstem, which both play large factors in physical movement. Therefore, the basal ganglia are the beginning of the process for somebody who is learning-by-doing to respond viscerally to the stimuli around them. Practice, however, is thought to be important in the process of the skill acquisition. As the synaptic plasticity allows for the changes and development of basal ganglia circuits’ participation in the performance of a skill, the more a person practices, the more plasticity his basal ganglia circuits will develop.
Cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex is the largest site of neural integration in the central nervous system. It plays a key role in attention, perception, awareness, thought, memory, language, and consciousness.In the human brain, the cerebral cortex is actually a sheet of neural tissue about 1/8th inch thick. This sheet is folded so that it can fit inside the skull. The neural circuits in this area of the brain expand with practice of an activity, just like the synaptic plasticity grows with practice.
Cerebellum
The cerebrum is the most highly developed part of the human brain and is responsible for thinking, perceiving, producing, and understanding language. Alterations in the brain that occur during learning seem to make the nerve cells more efficient or powerful. Studies have shown that animals raised in complex environments have a greater volume of capillaries per nerve cell—and therefore a greater supply of blood to the brain—than the caged animals, regardless of whether the caged animal lived alone or with companions. Overall, these studies depict an orchestrated pattern of increased capacity in the brain that depends on experience.
Recent neuroscience research discovered that it plays an important role in the reward response - one of the main drives that motivate and shape human behavior. In 2008, the Stanford Neurosciences Institute team was implementing an experiment about how the cerebellum controls muscles in mice by delivering a sugar water treat every time the neon mice pushed a lever, and accidently got a side observation that the cerebellum is also connected to the reward response.
Strategies with Physical Movement
TPR (Total Physical Response)
A reasonable hypothesis is that the brain and the nervous system are biologically programmed to acquire language, either the first or the second in a particular sequence and in a particular mode.The sequence is listening before speaking and the mode is to synchronize language with the individual's body.
(Asher 1977)
Total physical response is an approach to teaching second language that was developed in the 1970s by James Asher, professor of Psychology at the San Jose State University in California. It is a method of teaching second language that mimics the process children use when picking up their first. Total physical response is often used alongside other methods and techniques. It is popular with beginners and with young learners, although it can be used with students of all levels and all age groups.
TPR Activities
TPR Simon Says
TPR Circle
Your Morning Routine
Drive Time
Charades
The object of charades is to get your students to guess the answer using gestures alone. When a player is acting out the word or phrase, they are not allowed to talk. This game requires little preparation, a lot of imagination, and is great for a laugh.
Procedure
Prepare A Question Bank It works better for words or descriptions with specific indication rather than the ones with abstract meanings. Once you choose the words or phrases to act out, write them down on the slips of paper and put them into a container. Another choice is to build up your question bank with Apps and have people to control these Apps.
Group your students
Separate the class into groups and have them choose or find an actor coming to the front of the group. A less competitive version is to have one player act out a word or phrase and anyone can answer. The person who gets it right first is usually the next to act things out.
General Gestures
Have students to provide general gestures for narrowing down the guessing before start. Some common gestures like the number of words and some of the categories.
Relevance
TPR is not a new strategy and there are some reasons why it is still in vogue. First of all, TPR strategy takes human physical development and brain development into account, it follows what our brains need. Second, it is easy to learn, duplicate and spread, teachers do not need to study what is the theory behind yet they can implement TPR in their classes.
The Spelling Relay Race
This is a fun game to review spelling and writing. You will have your students to separate into two groups and offer each group a marker to share.
Just as in other relay race games, you need to set a time and have students decide the order of who goes first and who is next. The only difference is to adapt the relay to a white board writing game. People will walk or run to the white board and continue with the spelling, and every player has only one choice, to add up one letter or to erase one. By the end of the relay, you may have students to check the accuracy of writing or have two groups to check for each other.
Relevance
Spelling and Chinese character strokes are usually hard to grasp, as they require good memory especially the long-term one. People learn best when their body are motivated to participate(Council,1999). Spelling race is just a memorize game added with some physical reactions. The idea is simple but this activity definitely works both for first language learning and second language learning.
Gallery walk
During a gallery walk, students explore multiple texts or images that are placed around the room. You can use this strategy when you want to have students share their work with peers, examine historical documents, solve math problems, generate ideas, respond to a collection of quotations, etc.
Procedure
Select
Select the texts (e.g., quotations, images, documents, and/or student work) you will be using for the gallery work.
Display
Texts should be displayed “gallery style,” in a way that allows students to disperse themselves around the room. Texts can be hung on walls or placed on tables. In order to avoid significant crowding, a better choice is to exhibit text into several stations.
Group
Put students into groups, depending on the size of the class. Each group should start at a different station.
Explore
Viewing instructions will depend on your goals for the activity. If the purpose of the gallery walk is to introduce students to new material, you might want them to take informal notes as they walk around the room. If the purpose is for students to take particular information, you can create a graphic organizer for them to complete as they view the “exhibit,” or compile a list of questions for them to answer based on the texts on display. Sometimes teachers ask students to identify similarities and differences among a collection of texts.
Students can take a gallery walk on their own or with a partner. If they tour in groups, you may give them multiple tasks to choose, like the note recorder, the comment recorder to write group thought on the texts and maybe one presentation reporter. If they work on their own, you may have them write down the initials below their comment on the text and maybe provide pens in different colors.
Rotate
Set a time for each station and remind students to rotate. To involve all group members, you may also try to switch recorders only each time.
Debrief
Have students go back to their first station and read what others comment on it and bring their observation to the debrief. Depending on the goals of the gallery walk, this debrief can take a variety of forms. You might ask students to share the information they collected, or you might ask students what conclusions they can draw about a larger question from the evidence they examined.
Relevance
Gallery walk can come into diverse forms. For Pre-K or K classes, you may have producers standing in front of their project while only one pr two gallery walkers walking around the room. A fast version is the gallery run, in this activity in will post lower-lever questions (basic calculation questions, biological concepts, physics formulas, spelling, etc.) and students will try to answer as many questions as they can. An alternative activity is the graffiti, instead of historical documents or quotations, students are invited to post their ideas or thoughts on a specific concern in a way of graffiti. Physical movement activities does not need to make huge movement, what we want to have in our classes is an inviting environment that everybody is willing to participate.
Barometer Activity
The Barometer teaching strategy helps students share their opinions by asking them to line up along a continuum based on their position on an issue. This exercise serves well as an ice breaker, establishing an interactive classroom atmosphere. As the Barometer activity gets many arguments out on the table, it performs well as a stimulus for discussion and critical thinking, and as a means for forming diverse student groups for class debates, research projects and pre-writing exercise.
Sample Topics and Questions
Types of music: i.e., country, classical, heavy metal, rap, jazz, etc.
The Yankees/Cubs/Cardinals/Red Sox/etc. have a chance at winning the World Series.
The majority of undergraduates at my university will have cheated or performed at least one act of academic dishonesty before graduating.
I would rather be alone or with one close friend in a beautiful nature setting than at a lively, fun party with a large group of people—many of whom I do not know.
At a state university, it is inappropriate (and perhaps unconstitutional) to recite religious invocations or organized prayers over a public address system before such
Large group assemblies as graduation, convocations, or football games.
Student athletes should not be admitted or offered scholarships unless they meet the same academic requirements that are demanded of all other students.
A constitutional amendment should be passed banning abortions.
The drug war has failed and our prisons are tremendously overcrowded with individuals arrested for possession of illegal substances. Possession of such substances should be decriminalized and additional funding instead should go into new drug treatment centers.
The average price this summer of a gallon of gasoline will be:
a. under $3.50; b.under $4; c. under $4.5
Relevance
Some variations of the barometer activity. You may draw a barometer on the white board and have the students post their name on it then organize a discussion about the post-it collection. This activity is a public reaction observation rather than explaining oneself as the classical barometer. Another alternative activity is a flipped classroom version. Teachers are to assign students with specific perspectives before the class, they are driven to research about the people who hold that perspective about the real-world issue which assigned to them and show their choices on the barometer in the class. Students will try to rationalize their choices using the information they researched. There is a myth about student centered classroom should be 100% student management. But what we are supposed to understand in the shifting is that , the goal should be to meet the needs of students in ways that encourage active learning and independent thinking(Nicole, 2014) .
Give One, Get one
In this strategy, students formulate initial positions and arguments in response to a question or prompt and then share them with each other through a structured procedure. That way they can test, refine, and strengthen their ideas as they share their ideas and hear the ideas of others. Students will practice being active listeners or readers—an essential skill for learning new information.
Procedure
Preparation
Ask students to divide a sheet of paper into two vertical columns. Label the left side “Give One” and the right side “Get One.”Ask students to respond to your question and write their ideas and opinions on the Give One column on their paper. They do not need to write complete sentences; responses can be in list form.
Give One, Get one
Tell students to walk around and find a partner. Each partner “gives,” or shares, items from his or her list. For example, Partner A shares his/her responses until Partner B hears something that is not already on his/her list. Partner B writes the new response in the Get One column on the paper, along with Partner A’s name. Once Partner B has “gotten” one, the roles switch. Students repeat this process with other peers until time runs out.
Debrief
After this strategy, you will want to debrief in a class discussion. Some sample questions include:
What did you learn today?
How does the information relate to the essential question?
What else do you want to know?
Role play
Role playing is a learning structure that allows students to immediately apply content as they are put in the role of a decision maker who must make a decision regarding a policy, resource allocation, or some other outcome. This technique is an excellent tool for engaging students and allowing them to interact with their peers as they try to complete the task assigned to them in their specific role.
Technologies Supporting the Approach
Role-play is a very flexible teaching approach because it requires no special tools. However, technology can provide significant advantages, and new possibilities, for using the approach as a learning activity.
Technology for Recording and Revisiting
Technology such as voice recorders, video cameras and smartphones/tablets allow traditional face-to-face role-play exercises to be recorded and stored online for later reference, analysis and reflection. This can allow an exercise to be revisited and re-evaluated in a later date, which isn’t generally possible when the exercise has not been recorded.
Technology for Voting and Analysis
The electronic voting system or Twitter would allow a group of students to observe the role-play and evaluate the situation and conversation as it develops, such as by voting on whether a character was too aggressive or submissive during a particular interaction. This information could be retained and, coupled with a recording, provide another resource for later analysis and reflection.
Asynchronous Technologies
Asynchronous technologies create possibilities for role-play to take place when people can’t make it to meet each other. Those technologies such as online forums and discussion boards, Social Networks, Twitter, etc., allow role-play to take place over longer periods of time and in a more considered way. This means that role-play can take place outside of timetabled sessions and in situations where students are unable to physical meet at the same time. In this situation students would post their part of the conversation, wait until the other participant(s) have responded, and then post their own reply, and so on.
Relevance
Role play is one of the kinesthetic learning strategies that benefit learners who have memories associated with emotions, thus these type of learning experiences are associated with emotions such as excitement, curiosity, anger, disappointment and success(Ian, 2014).What I appreciate about this strategy is the variations and adaptations along with the technological trend. Most people like to play interactive on-line games rather than the single-player games, the basic reason is people need interaction whether you live in a three-dimensional world or a two-dimensional one as the World Wide Web. The myth behind a successful class is the appreciation of participants values and the interactive environment that people are invited and motivated to work together. And this is also the reason behind the student centered learning. The learners may not be allowed to leave the classroom when the instruction doesn't involve them, but there are many other ways that they check out(John McCarthy, 2015). When people can not find their value in the environment their are deemed to leave with disappointment.
This is a fun game to use with students who may be new to each other and has the benefit that it works in small groups or large. For added difficulty you can add the student into teams to help motivate them to work as a team as well and create a race element to the game.
Procedure
The teacher creates a word of sentences (depends on the level of students) and they must stand in line. To gain the added difficult you can spread the student out around the class and have obstacles around they have the avoid (while still working in conjunction with safety standards) or do a physical activity before they say the word/sentence to the next student. The last student then must write what they heard on the board. At the end we get to see the difference between the original word or phrase and what has been written on the board. (Bhola, D., Michelle, Shea, A., & Cab, J. 2019)
Physical activities
- Perform jumping jacks
- Push ups.
- Running relays
- Clapping
- Hopping on one leg
All of these can be done while going to the next student in line or while whispering to them depending on the class size.
Sample sentences or phrases
I love homework on a hot hill.
She sells seashells on the seashore
I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen (3 times fast)
You can increase the scope of difficulty of the game and increase the obstacle part of the game. Tongue twisters have the added difficulty that you must remember them, say them fast and pronounce them properly while doing a physical activity e.g. hopping on one leg or pushups. (Bhola, D., Michelle, Shea, A., & Cab, J. 2019)
Debrief
Have students discuss about what made this activity difficult for them as a group. What did the find fun etc.
Have then work together to explain their ideas of the game and what they felt would make the game more fun challenging for the next time and use the feedback to incorporate into the next game.
The focus is to have students work together as well as through movement, making using of their body as well as their mind in one activity. (Bhola, D., Michelle, Shea, A., & Cab, J. 2019)
Relevance
It’s a way to get student to engage with each other on a peer to peer level while doing physical activities, it shows use of not juts the mental also the physical with having to remember sentences. They get to move around the classroom or outside depending on where the activities take place, making sure to use the relevant health and safety measure to do so.
This is a great way to get student to work tighter and create physical movement for them within a certain confined area e.g. the school grounds or depending on weather and location the inside of the school. The key area is having them not just work tighter but physically search for clues as do this through peer to peer interaction. It limits the teacher’s role to that of someone who facilities and can add on elements such as ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ if they start to lose interest or direction.
Procedure
Post cards or clues around the classroom/ area for the students to find.
Each group has an answer page to work with and use to write down the answers.
Everyone has the same start point and needs to come back once they are finished.
Student move from point to point writing down the answer and making sure to hide from the other groups to stop cheating.
Each of the clues would link in to each other in some way or another.
If they cannot find their answer choice, then they know they made the wrong choice and need to return to the previous card and try again ((Scavenger Hunts, 6 Steps to Success. 2019)
The winner is the team who find the prize or final card e.g. the golden ticket!
This kind of activity uses creative thinking and lets student think outside of their comfort zone while working with other students in the class. You can have it as one big group or speared into smaller teams to add the competitive element, helping to increase the physical response and speed that they would like to finish first. (Scavenger Hunts, 6 Steps to Success. 2019)
The teacher’s role
- Support
- Guide
- Monitor
This can help to increase pace of the activity or motivate teams who feel they are lagging to keep moving!
Relevance.
This activity challenges the student to think critically while moving around the class or designated areas. It gives them a chance to exercise both their bodies and their minds. The use of competition helps to speed up their movement and make them more willing to run around and be first.We want to be able to generate interest with the student in this while the exercise their mind and their body in one area.
Reference
Asher, J. J. (1969). The Total Physical Response Approach to Second Language Learning. The modern language journal, 53(1), 3-17.
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