Working in Movement

Children learn an incredible amount of stuff before they go to school. At birth, they can literally do nothing for themselves. Yet in a few short years, most kids learn really complex behaviors like walking, talking, feeding themselves, playing with stuff, driving their parents nuts, etc. All of this involves sensing and moving, sometimes a great deal of movement. By the time they are four or five we send them off to school to develop their cognitive ability, among other things.

Schooling is a brand new experience for most kids. Instead of moving around and exploring, they are asked to sit still and pay attention, at least for a good part of their day. It almost seems like sitting still and being able to pay attention to cognitive learning go hand in hand. But do they?

Wiggle while you learn describes one school where the answer is "not necessarily." The school is Scott Robertson elementary school in Edmonton, Canada. The school uses special sensory strategies, including moving around in a non-disruptive way, to help kids pay attention to the learning tasks in front of them.

"They need constant movement in order to pay attention," she said. "For a kid with ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder), the more wiggly they get, the more annoying they are for the teacher. But that's a clue to us that they are actually trying to attend and pay attention.

But this strategy of moving and learning isn't restricted to special needs kids a the school:

"In general, we think kids and adults are paying attention to us if they're looking at us and they're not wiggling or fidgeting," said Rae Finlayson, who oversees Scott Robertson's outreach program for special needs kids when they head back to their community schools for kindergarten. "But as adults, we've learned that there's a lot of us who don't sit still."

It turns out that movement is a very important component of learning of all kinds. And it's no wonder. As another teacher in another school puts it:

Movement is the only thing that unites all brain levels and integrates the right and left hemispheres of young learners. Surprising Truths The Implications of Brain Research

As adults we don't want to forget this. Movement is everything; everything is movement.