A Quote
“Taking breaks for physical play also has immediate impacts on learning, which may be due to children’s increased attention to academic tasks (Pellegrini, 2009). School-aged children who were assigned to five additional hours per week of physical activity performed better on standardized academic assessments than their peers who did not take part in physical activities (Shephard, 1983).”
SOURCE: Dr. Rachel E. White, The Power of Play: A Research Summary on Play and Learning.
A Thought
Why do schools refer to the ‘core’ curriculum? The only time the word core is used in the New Zealand Curriculum is within two of the eight defined learning areas: Languages and Science.
Why, when schools reference the ‘core’, do they never mean the Arts, Technology and PE?
Why do so few agonise about kids not being able to learn Dance every day? It has such strong connections to other learning areas, such as:
Maths (eg, counting, geometry, patterns)
English (eg, narrative, expression, inference)
Science (eg, forces)
Technology (eg, planning sequences, breaking down a whole into parts).
Why is there so little movement in the learning that happens in the ‘core’?
An Action
Identify the links between the learning areas. Where’s the opportunity for movement?
Learning’s Secret Sauce
We all can remember that one teacher - the one who ‘got’ us, who saw who we really were and who got the best out of us by building from the best of who we were.
That’s the secret sauce of learning, eh.
The Smata App helps you to tune in to the tiny clues that help you really see who your students are and the potential they have.
Be that one teacher, consistently.