How can we use this bevy of information to inform our teaching? I suggest that the research informs different arenas of school life.
Teaching and Reviewing Content
Movement can absolutely support initial content learning as well as review. Many teachers use movement based techniques in their classrooms every day to assist with these tasks. These range from simple exercises like station work, which get students walking around the room, to more complicated undertakings like assigning a movement to a particular literary device in a poem. There are a great number of resources that offer specific and practical approaches for incorporating movement into your classroom - The Kinesthetic Classroom: Teaching and Learning Through Movement by Traci Lengel and Mike Kuczala is a tremendous resource for secondary teachers of all subjects.
Classroom Management
Movement can be a great asset in classroom management. As Marianne Frostig and Phyllis Maslow discuss in their paper "Neuropsychological Contributions to Education," movement is tied to brain function, including the role of the limbic system. This emotional center of the brain can be influenced by movement (p. 46). We should allow students the opportunity to get up and move around, especially if their emotions are running high. "Movement is also a method of preventing emotional disturbances. It influences emotions, and emotions in turn influence muscle tonus," (p. 46). This theory is supported by the Dance/Movement Therapy community. Many adolescents lose the connection to their body when they go through puberty - their bodies look, act, and feel different. Pair this with a learning structure that has them sitting for most of the day and you have students out of touch and uncomfortable with their bodies (Engelhard, p. 498). In addition to this bodily disconnect, adolescents are undergoing dramatic hormonal and emotional changes. Engelhard states that allowing students a safe space in which to express their emotions through movement can go a long way to maintaining a healthy state of mind. "Therapeutically, movement allows adolescents to express their conflicts in an active, behavioral form that is often easier for them to communicate," (p. 499).
Student Support
The greatest takeaway for me from this work is the connections the motor processing regions of the brain have to the rest of the brain. "The cerebellum, the small portion of the brain close to the brain stem, is commonly linked to movement. It makes up only one-tenth of the brain's volume, but contains over half of its neurons, making it a virtual switchboard of cognitive activity," (Blakemore, p. 25). Understanding how movement can impact students abilities to focus, control their emotions, learn new content, and review older content can go a long way to assisting a struggling student. This knowledge provides the opportunity to employ new strategies and arm the student with information that may assist him or her.
Conclusion
Movement in the classroom is valuable for more than just teaching and reviewing content - it can give our students an emotional outlet, stronger focus, and deeper learning. I look forward to integrating many of these strategies into my classroom.
References
Blakemore, C.L. (2003). Movement is essential to learning. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 74(9), 22 - 41.
Engelhard, S. E. (2014). Dance/movement therapy during adolescence - Learning about adolescence through the experiential movement of dance/movement therapy students. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(5), 498 - 503.
Frostig, M., Maslow, P. (1979). Neuropsychological contributions to education. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 12(8), 40 - 53.
Lengel, T., Kuczala, M. (2010). The kinesthetic classroom: Teaching and learning through movement. Thousand Oaks, CA: A SAGE Company.