Move Your Body!

I learned over the past three weeks what an active group of students I have so I stepped WAY out of my comfort zone and came up with motions to help them out.  Step into the beehive and see what these worker bees have been up too!

We started with "Plot Mountain".  My kids freak-out if we use too many technical terms for their learning so we made an anchor chart and decided that the diagram looked like a mountain.  To help we also added in some body movements.

Students start squatting with their hands touching the ground.  The quietly whisper, "rising action, rising action"... as the slowly stand up.

When students are completely standing the jump in the air and yell "CLIMAX" to represent what we call the firework moment in the story.

Finally students slowly return to their starting position as they whisper "falling action, falling action."
My kids LOVE to practice plot mountain.  They grasped the components immediately after I introduced the body movements and stopped in the hall to show off their newly acquired skills for our assistant principal.

We are also working on supporting our claims/answers with evidence as well.  While students make a claim in a class discussion they form their classmates form the letter "C" with their hands to show they understand that a claim has been made.

Students then signal for some support.  (Ignore the blurry picture please, catching movements is hard stuff).  Students place their hands palm up at their shoulders and press upwards to show they need to hear support for the claim.  Support can be from the text or schema but without the support the claim has no place in our room!

 We also constantly signal for students to refer to the text for evidence, connections or to look back and to find some answers.  I witnessed students signaling each other during discussions to go back to the text for an answer!  I love the non-verbal communication.  Students don't feel that they have been singled out and I can save my voice for times it's needed a little more.

The last motion I have to share (today) is our hand motion for connection.  I LOVE my students making connections between subjects, concepts, their own lives or my life based on the snippets of stories they have heard.  When a student thinks of a connection they have with whatever we are doing they form the connection signal.  Today we were sharing our weekend plans and some threw up a connection symbol!!  I'm a firm believer that if my students can connect their learning to the world around them that knowledge will become schema much faster than without a connection.


Any other teachers out their with good hand motions for 3rd grade concepts??  If so, bring them on!

Buzz, Buzz
Ms. B