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Marzano Element 27: Using Physical Movement

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I am listing some tips and tricks that I have just from my experience with this element in my classroom! Feel free to implement in your classroom!

1. Stand up and stretch: I use this technique a lot after direct instruction at my smartboard. I use a sing song tone and say "If you can hear me right now, touch your head. If you can hear me right now, touch your head. If you can hear my right now, touch your nose..then your toes. If you can hear me right now, fold your hands."  This gives students a quick little break from learning and gets them moving. We may even cut to a short Gonoodle video if we are transitioning from direct instruction at the smartboard back to their desks.

2. Vote with your feet: I have always referred to this as 'pick a side'. I never knew it had a real name for it. We use this a lot for voting opinions in my class during our creative writing. I present it in a "would you rather" form. You could google and research a lot of cool "would you rather" questions.

3. Corners activities: This is great for task card activities where students rotate through each task problem. You could extend this with technology and have students scan a QR code to open the task card problem for them.

4. Stand up and be counted: This could be a quick assessment at the end of a lesson. You could show a 4,3,2,1 scale and have students self assess themselves and their comfortability of a topic. 4 being independent and confident, 1 being struggling and needing further assistance.

5. Body representations: I typed above that this can be used during our sight word chants. Last year I found a girl on tiktok that has incorporated chants and movement with her sight words. It has helped to increase their engagement and their retention of the sight word. Over my maternity leave in Jan last year, I recorded myself doing sight word chants for my students to follow along with each day that I was gone. My students received such high scores on their HFW assessment when I came back. I highly recommend sight word chants in your practice!

6. Drama integration: I think reader's theatre is a great way to incorporate drama into the classroom, while encouraging reading fluency and practicing infliction.

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How can technology enhance this? pt2  (GONOODLE LINK)

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How can technology enhance this? pt2  (GONOODLE LINK)

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A lot of brain break videos can be found on YouTube! I am linking one of our favorite ones lately. This is a "Would you rather" video. You can "vote with your feet" and then it tells you whatever you chose, you have to do a certain exercise!

You can also research "Just Dance Videos" or "Kidzbop Dance Videos" and get music that is more popular with your students.

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BRAIN BREAK:WOULD YOU RATHER MADRIGAL EDITION. Exercises for the classroom. Movement activity.

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6. Drama related activities

Students act out an event being studied, taking the roles of various participants in the event. This works especially well with historical situations, current events, and events in literature.

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When students explore content using dramatic scripts, they can make gains in reading fluency and comprehension, while having fun.

These days, many teachers struggle when their tried-and-true pedagogy, developed and refined over years of practice, doesn't translate to distance learning. Many are embracing the disruption brought about by online learning to familiarize themselves with flexible methodologies that work well in that context, including arts integration strategies. Those that borrow from the dramatic arts, such as readers theater and teacher in role, can be particularly effective.

These engaging approaches have been around a long time, and they encourage interaction and collaboration and make content accessible for multiple levels of learners, from emerging readers through high school seniors. They can also inject a much-needed dose of fun into online lessons.

Student Engagement With Readers Theater

Actors/readers use scripts in presentation, and memorization is not prioritized.

Actors/readers are stationary and do not use theatrical devices (e.g., no staging, scenery, props, lighting, or costumes).

Nuances of the story are communicated primarily through vocal expression.

Scripts are prepublished, widely available, and intended for repetitive use.

Readers theater includes the following elements:

By following a script, students are in a constant state of decoding, and as members of an interdependent ensemble, they are responsible for following their script closely and anticipating their own speaking role, thus increasing focus and engagement.

Readers theater scripts are designed to be read and reread multiple times, making their use in the online classroom particularly beneficial for second language learners or other students working on decoding and fluency. Repetition increases retention for all student participants.

In many ways, readers theater is an ideal arts integration distance learning strategy because it's not constrained by the trappings of a typical theater performance (props, costumes, memorization, and the like), and many students' home learning space can become a stage.

For example, I recently worked with the teachers of rising first graders who were in virtual summer school; there were serious concerns that for these students, the last months of kindergarten had been so challenging that they were losing interest in or even regressing in reading. We created a short readers theater script that delivered content about the happy face spider ( Theridion grallator, native to Hawaii). The script included a solo speaking line for each student, opportunities for gestures that physicalized their understanding and were visible from the cameras, and humor.

Over the course of several weeks, students performed the script multiple times, building retention of the content and reading fluency. A final Zoom performance demonstrated the students' advances in their reading levels, as well as their joy and confidence in what they had learned.

The literacy benefits of readers theater are many: Students read more quickly and with greater fluency, and demonstrate greater reading comprehension. There are also indicators that students who participate show increased focus and motivation in school, a greater sense of purpose in their learning, a more positive attitude toward reading, and increased confidence-all of which translate to happier students and more joyful learning environments.

One of the greatest strengths of readers theater as an online teaching strategy is its adaptability. Chances are, no matter what you're teaching and at what level, there's a script available; shared online teacher resources often include scripts and templates. A quick internet search for "readers theater scripts" and a grade level will yield free resources, too. Many educational publishers also offer scripts (see this guide).

For teachers looking to take readers theater to the next level, writing their own scripts is an option. By authoring a script, a teacher can tailor a differentiated line for each student participant, crafted to meet their reading level or to include sight words. Reluctant readers can be paired with a partner to build confidence and fluency, and the content of a script can be adapted as student understanding grows. Students can also be taught to write their own scripts and thereby build their writing skills.

Educators Invite Participation by Teaching in Role

Teacher in role is a similarly engaging instructional strategy that has long been used in educational theater but is becoming mainstream. With in-role teaching, a teacher/facilitator assumes the role of a character in a story or of an expert on a given subject.

Students research a story or subject and are invited to participate in a conversation with the teacher/facilitator, asking questions born of their research. While participating in the conversation with their teacher/facilitator, students are also placed in-role as researchers, thus upping their investment in the drama.

Teachers can enhance the online learning experience by using a simple prop or costume if they like, but the primary objective is to remain faithful to their role and while in conversation with students.

An example: Eighth-grade students are immersed in a unit on the American Civil War; they assume the role of historians invited to a function where they hear a talk given by Gertie, Harriet Tubman's adopted daughter, played by the teacher. She shares a firsthand account of her mother's life, and the historians ask her questions.

When you deliver instruction in a novel way, as with readers theater and teaching in role, students can become more engaged and experience an esprit de corps: Likely they will be proud that they collaborated to understand an idea or concept through the entertaining conversation, dialogue, and interviewing.

As with most new skills, the more you live with these integration strategies, the more a part of you they become. In the end, whether you decide to try readers theater or teaching in role, the goals are the same: catching the attention of your online learners and making your life as a teacher more joyful.

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Strategies From the Dramatic Arts Can Enhance Student Engagement

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When students explore content using dramatic scripts, they can make gains in reading fluency and comprehension, while having fun. These days, many teachers struggle when their tried-and-true pedagogy, developed and refined over years of practice, doesn't translate to distance learning.

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5. Body representations

Students create body representations in which they act out important content or critical aspects of a topic. For example, students could form cause-and-effect chains, physically act out key sequence elements, or represent vocabulary terms.

I am thinking that this could correlate with our sight word chants that have movements that go along with them.

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4. Stand and be counted

After a lesson, students stand up based on their self-assessment of how well they understood the key ideas and concepts presented in the lesson. The teacher presents a self-assessment scale, gives students a moment to think, and then prompts students at each level of the scale to stand. For example, a teacher might present a 1–4 scale in which 1 indicates “I didn’t understand any of the concepts presented in this lesson” and 4 indicates “I clearly understand all the concepts presented in this lesson.” After giving students time to reflect and rate themselves, the teacher would say, “Okay, stand up if you gave yourself a 1 on the scale.” When students stand for a particular level, the teacher makes note of how many there are, asks them to sit back down, and then prompts students at the next level of the scale to stand up.

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3. Corners activities

The teacher splits the class into four groups, which then rotate to each of the four corners of the classroom to examine four different questions related to key content. The teacher assigns a recorder to stay in each corner to summarize students’ comments about that corner’s question. At the end, each recorder reads the summary from that corner.

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2. Vote with your feet

The teacher posts a sign in each corner of the room identifying responses to a true/false or multiple-choice question or reactions to answers to a question (incorrect, partially correct, totally correct). For example, if the question is multiple choice, the teacher would post signs reading A, B, C, and D in various parts of the room. Choices might also be statements of various opinions or perspectives on a topic. Students move to the corner that has the sign with the answer they think is correct. Before discussing the correct answer, the teacher asks one student under each option to explain why he or she believes that answer is correct.

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1. Stand up and Stretch

Periodically, the teacher asks students to stand up and stretch. This activity is especially useful when students need to change their focus, concentration, or level of engagement, because it causes more blood and oxygen to flow to the brain. The teacher can also instruct students to stretch in their seats if they feel tired or unfocused during class.

Examples of stretches:

Side stretch: Stand with feet slightly more than hip-width apart. Raise one arm above head and place other hand on hip. Lean torso toward the side where the hand

Hamstring stretch: Stand with feet about six inches apart. Bend forward and reach arms down toward toes. Make sure head and neck are relaxed; look down toward toes.

Quad stretch: Place one hand on desk for balance. Stand on one leg and bend other leg at knee to raise the foot behind the body. Use hand to grasp top of foot or ankle and pull gently up and forward to increase stretch. Be sure to stand up straight throughout; do not bend at waist or hips.

Whole-body stretch: Stand with feet hip-width apart. Raise both arms above head. Stand on tiptoes and try to touch the ceiling.

Lunge: Stand with feet hip-width apart. Take a medium to large step forward with one foot. Forward leg should bend at the knee, keeping the shin vertical, while the back leg stays straight. Keep the torso upright and place hands on hips or raise arms above head.

Triceps stretch: Raise one arm above head. Bend arm at elbow so that the hand touches the back of the same shoulder. Use the opposite hand to grasp the elbow and gently push back to increase the stretch.

Deltoid stretch: With arm straight at shoulder level, reach across body so that the upper arm touches the chest. Use opposite hand to grasp elbow and pull toward body to increase the stretch.

Neck stretch: Stand or sit with good posture (back straight, not supported by chair). Tilt head slowly to each side. Nod head forward as if touching chin to chest.

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"This element involves the teacher engaging students in physical movement to maintain engagement. Research has shown that increased physical activity is associated with higher energy levels. Higher energy, in turn, allows students to pay more attention to what is happening in class. Additionally, physical movement increases blood flow to the brain, which facilitates thinking and learning "