What did you learn about your research question?

There are so many new and interesting pieces of research that are found each and everyday on my particular research question. I knew I wanted to dive more in depth and find out in an actual classroom whether or not movement and art can increase student comprehension. I had a little more than 3 months to investigate in my own 3rd grade classroom. My tutee this semester struggled with focusing and remembering what had previously happened in the story that she just read. She had previously told me when we first met that she absolutely loved art. It sparked the question if art has any correlation with better comprehension. I knew I wanted to add another element into my research question, so I chose to incorporate movement after quickly seeing the effects of students sitting at their desks all day. After doing much research and personal investigating, I noticed how important incorporating both art and movement are into day to day activities. According to Joy Pollock and Elisabeth Waller, the author of “Day to Day Dyslexia in the Classroom”, it has been proven that movement in the form of exercise can help children to learn. There are dozens upon dozens of articles supporting movement into the classroom. Since movement is a form of art, I think that the two components really compliment one another. I’ve learned that adding art and movement into the classroom is a lot easier said than done. I saw in my classroom how out of control students can get with dancing, playing, and singing. Personally, I haven’t seen any successful attempts with incorporating movement due to the behavior in the class. Although I haven’t personally seen any success, there is enough research to back it up that I would love to try and incorporate it in my next class. 

How will this learning inform your future teaching?

This research has really impacted my view on how I will teach in the future. I think creating a solid foundation with the students first and then having good behavioral management system in place. I believe that it is hard to introduce something that the students have little to no experience with and expecting positive results. Slowly incorporating more and more movement and art into the classroom would be the way that I would introduce it to students. Students could become overly excited and miss the purpose of the activity if not done correctly. Starting out by acting out their word study words or even spelling out their words using playdoh is a great way to start. There are so many ways that I would love to incorporate movement and art into my future classroom. A few examples: playing hopscotch for spelling words, jumping/clapping for each syllable in a word, drawing a summary, sculpting landmarks, etc.