As a teacher researcher, there were so many different eye opening experiences I got to partake in over the course of my research. My identity, as a teacher researcher, is one to accept all students and their learning abilities/ capabilities wherever they are at. I believe that teachers should embrace the challenge of finding different ways to incorporate movement in the classroom. Being able to have devoted time to dig into researched articles and observe different scenarios, really opened my eyes up to the possibility that kinesthetic learning should be prominent in the school systems. All students can benefit from movement, even if it is not their favorite thing to do. Kinesthetic movement can foster so many healthy, important benefits in students and all students should be motivated with the opportunity to learn that way. Through this process, I have learned so many passionate ideals of my identity as a teacher that I truly want to learn to embrace with pride for my future classroom.
Learning about how beneficial kinesthetic learning has been on retention, I started to develop my ways of teaching to always incorporate hands- on tasks and lots of movement. The movement that I incorporated in my lessons are purposeful though. It also developed my style of teaching to consider more assessments for my students just to make sure the movement is not too much for them. I think that providing opportunities for students to act out, sing, and dance for lessons involving reading and writing will get students excited about reading and writing. I know that the kinesthetic movement will increase retention of material and, in some cases, pace of learning the material, but it should also be used to motivate children in areas of study that may be hard for them to understand. I want to use kinesthetic learning to help those students, who may need a little more explanation or help.
After doing this extensive research, I started to reflect on my own reading and writing abilities and capabilities. I used to love to read as a child and when I grew older, that love disappeared. In Kindergarten, I had a teacher that was super engage with us and allowed us to explore our ourselves, while learning. But, as the years progressed, everything became more worksheet and lecture based. Now, I have been currently trying to bring my love for reading and writing back. Due to my research, I have tried to do more reading when being active whether that is exercising or simply acting the story out for fun. I know that I need that extra work to understand what I am reading and that is okay. I also think that all of this research will help me relate to other people’s reading and writing abilities and allowed me to gather enough knowledge to foster that love in reading and writing in every student.
