Rock Your Students’ World: Taking Learning to a New Level with Movement, Music, and Storytelling

“Steve’s passion for teaching is evident in everything he does. His thoughtful strategies and techniques not only meet the academic needs of children, but address the physical and emotional needs as well. In his classroom students move, dance, sing and learn all at the same time! He encourages his students to be to be the best they can be, and he leads by example everyday.”

-Catherine Handelman, K-1 Teacher

Description

The recent explosion of literature relating the findings of brain research and its implications for improving student learning has presented educators with a golden opportunity to reach greater heights and achieve greater results than ever before. Teachers now know more than we’ve ever known about how the brain functions, how students learn best, and which types of instructional practices hold the most promise.

Though the list of effective, brain-friendly practices recommended by the research is long and varied, three particular types of strategies stand out to me as unusually engaging and powerful—those involving movement, music, and storytelling. They are the focus of this book.

As I have worked over the past few years to incorporate brain-friendly practices into my teaching, I have found that students simply react differently to activities that include elements of movement, music, and storytelling. Even when compared to other research-based, effective practices, these three elements offer unparalleled novelty, interest, stimulation, excitement, and joy. As a result, students become emotionally involved in these activities, pay more attention, remember better, and, in short, learn better. In addition, strategies that incorporate movement, music, and storytelling improve class morale, build self-esteem and enthusiasm for learning, and increase feelings of student “connectedness” to the class and to one another.

Just as important as any research finding or any educational consideration regarding the “Big Three,” they are FUN. When I say they are fun, of course, I mean that students will like them, but just as important, teachers will also like them. Teaching is a difficult, challenging job, and we need to be able to enjoy ourselves at work if we’re going to survive and thrive in the profession. These activities help us do exactly that.

Every day I use a handful of the strategies contained in the book. Without fail, these occasions are often the best parts of my day. It’s a blast, for example, watching students improve their skip counting by dancing the Macarena, use the Sprinkler System when multiplying larger numbers, and learn the parts of a book by singing a song set to the “The Addams Family” theme. Educators will immediately grasp the appeal and effectiveness of these types of multi-modal, multiple-intelligence-based activities, and their students will appreciate being in a classroom where music is played frequently and for a variety of purposes, where they have the freedom to move around and use their bodies to learn, and where the power of a story is used to maximum effect.

Gathering, adapting, and creating the activities that comprise this book has been my labor of love over the past few years, and I’m excited to share them in Rock Your Students’ World. I believe the substance and spirit of this book can have a transformative effect on classrooms everywhere. I have written this book for those teachers who are seeking to help students meet state content standards and perform well on tests while also preserving the enthusiasm and joy that should lie at the heart of every classroom that values the whole child.

Never have we known more about how to help our students on their journey to better learning; never have we been in a position to have so much fun along the way.

Book Table of Contents

• Introduction



• Chapter 1 The Morning Movement Warm-up
  • Cross-crawls
  • Movement Choices
  • Deep Breathing
  • Hook-ups



• Chapter 2 Using Movement and Storytelling to Teach Math Standards
  • Four Activity Ideas That Include Movement
    • Give 1, Get 1
    • Human Health Hunt
    • The Walking Pair-Share
    • Gallery Walks
  • Teaching Math Content Standards Through Movement and Storytelling
    • The Day Steven Got Even
    • Place Value Hopscotch
    • Place Value Jumping Jacks
    • Rounding to the Nearest 10
    • Comparing and Ordering Obstacle Course (AKA “The Hungry Alligator Game”)
    • Reading Large Numbers
    • The Subtraction Fire
    • And Then Along Came....
    • The Sprinkler System
    • The Multiplication Hula
    • The Story of Peri Meter
    • The Story of Area
    • The Story of Volume
    • Coordinate Graphing
    • Sharing Five Dollars



• Chapter 3 Using Movement and Storytelling to Teach Language Arts Standards
  • The Synonym-Antonym Sidestep
  • The Jumping Game
  • The Storytelling Circle
  • Reading Around the Room
  • Jump Ropes
  • The Slouch Game
  • Reading Comprehension Dribbling
  • Index Card Arranging
  • Card Sorting
  • The Contraction Blues
  • Inquiry-based, Student-Generated Movements to Remember Rules and Learn
  • Content: The Homophone Challenge



• Chapter 4 Using Movement and Storytelling to Teach Science and Health Standards
  • States of Matter
  • Sources of Energy
  • The Energy Wave
  • Planets Revolving and Rotating Around the Sun
  • 8 Cups a Day
  • Sleep Interruption Tag
  • Stress Tag
  • Balancing the Food Pyramid
  • What’s In It For Me?



• Chapter 5 Using “Piggyback” Songs to Entrain New Learning
  • Macarena Friday
  • All of Us Can
  • The Book Parts Song
  • The Prefix-Suffix Song
  • Lunar Cycle
  • Now You’re AOK
  • Need to Have a Cap
  • Faces, Edges, Vertices
  • Cause and Effect
  • You Get the Equal Sign
  • Lines, Rays, and Segments
  • The Measurement Conga
  • The Paragraph Structure Song
  • The Contraction Song
  • Learning Spelling Words With Songs



• Chapter 6 Movement Breaks
  • Individual Movement Breaks
    • Moving to the Music
    • Da Do Run Run
    • Cross-lateral Movements
    • This & That
    • Breathing Variations
    • 60-Second Mental Vacation
    • Air Printing/Cursive
    • As If
    • Tony Chestnut
    • Beach Movements to the Beach Boys
    • Private Idaho
    • Sports-themed Athletic Movements
    • Stretching and Balancing
    • Quick Hands
    • Self-Messaging and Warming
    • Rhythmic, Responsive Clapping
    • Positive Self-Talk
    • Tense & Relax
    • Line Dancing
  • Partner Movement Breaks
    • Partner Mirroring
    • Partner Handshakes
    • Walk & Talk
    • Partner Challenge Task Sheet
  • Movement Breaks Involving Objects
    • Bean Bags
    • Cupstacking
    • Pedometer Activities
    • Beach Balls to the Beach Boys



• Chapter 7 Rhythms, Chants, and Movement Stories
  • Rhythms and Chants
    • Subject & Predicate
    • Rounding Chant
    • 8 Cups a Day
    • Heading Our Paper
    • Making an Inference
    • Alliterations
    • Three Kinds of Angles
    • Parts of a Letter
    • The Human Thermometer
    • Lines of Latitude
    • Layers of the Rainforest
    • Cursive Writing
  • Movement Stories
    • Space Jam
    • Rainforest Layers
    • Waxing and Waning
    • States of Matter
      • The Story of Tommy and Tammy
      • Going for the Gold
    • The Trip to the Zoo



• Appendix 1 Index of Ideas and Strategies Organized by Topic

Contact