How to Move & Learn: An evidence-based guide to embedding physically active learning in your
£16.99*
Pros
- An excellent approach for schools to take if they want to enhance physical activity to improve learning across different subjects.
- With many years of experience, the authors have pulled together approaches, resources and ideas to build a culture and ethos in schools that will enhance teaching and learning.
- In addition to providing resources and activities to implement embedding physically active learning in your school, the book also highlights key research and evidence that support the approaches.
- Along with providing an audit and planning tool for teachers, the book also provides a great series of links and references to help colleagues take the approach further.
- With continued concerns about the health and fitness of young people, this book shows how schools can implement inclusive and physically active learning across a range of subjects.
Supported by Crown House Publishing
If you ask those in education ‘What does learning look like?’, most would think of children (over the age of six anyway) sitting at desks focusing on a learning task. However, if ‘learning happens when people have to think hard’,¹ as defined by the Great Teaching Toolkit,² where is the evidence that we think harder when sedentary?
It is well known that increased physical activity and reduced sedentary time have wide-ranging benefits, including improved brain function and wellbeing. The World Health Organization has reported that three in four adolescents (aged 11–17 years) do not currently meet their global recommendations for physical activity.³ Sport England’s 2019 Survey found that only 46.8% of children achieved the recommended daily levels of physical activity.⁴ The UK guidance on physical activity for children and young people states that they should engage in a variety of types and intensities of physical activity across the week and minimise the amount of sedentary time; when possible, long periods of inactivity should be broken up with light physical activity.⁵
So, what if there was evidence that using movement in the learning process improves outcomes for children? What if it was possible for teachers to easily adapt their practice to make this a reality? A new research-based book by Bryn Llewellyn, Ian Holmes and Richard Allman called How to Move & Learn aims to do just that, building teachers’ ability, opportunity and motivation to integrate movement purposefully into the learning process.
Teachers and school leaders now have the chance to choose an approach to learning that improves academic attainment as well as health and well-being, rather than seeing the two as mutually exclusive. They can raise educational standards while bringing the joy of learning to children through a culture of collaboration, curiosity and creativity. The reward is to be the teacher of the children who can’t wait to tell others how and what they have learned today – to Move & Learn.
The authors believe that, “Ultimately, How to Move & Learn is about finding opportunities to reduce sedentary time and increase physical activity while enhancing learning and the learning experience for children. The Move & Learnapproach has an impact on changing attitudes to learning and confidence, particularly in new ways of learning that engages even the most reluctant of learners and inspires discussion beyond that achieved in the traditional classroom.”
How to Move & Learn seeks to empower the teacher and the school community to use movement as a key part of teaching and learning, to bring health and education together for the long-term benefit of the children they serve – a goal more important than ever as we seek to help children recover lost learning and reduce the impact on wellbeing from the Covid-19 pandemic.
1. R. Coe, What makes great teaching?, Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring (31 October 2015), p.13.
2. See https://www.greatteaching.com.
3. World Health Organization, Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018– 2030: More Active People for a Healthier World (2018).
4. Sport England, Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, Academic Year 2018/19 (December 2019).
5. Department of Health & Social Care, Llwodraeth Cymru Welsh Government, Department of Health Northern Ireland and the Scottish Government, UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines (7 September 2019), p. 9.
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