InTASC Standard #1: Learner Development. The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.
Throughout my teaching experience and my courses leading up to my teaching, I have noticed that students spend most of their day sitting. This can be problematic for every student, but especially those in their middle school years. According to the NEA, in an article titled, “Squirming Comes Naturally to Middle School Students”, children aged 11 to 16 years old are going through many different changes, one of the many including the hardening of the tailbone, which can cause sciatic nerve discomfort. Keeping in this mind, I have planned many lessons that have components where students get up and move around. The lesson captured in the picture above exemplifies one those “moving” lesson components. I am always asking myself, “How can I get the kids up and out of their seats?” In this case, the students were up and battling one another in a rock-paper-scissor tournament at the beginning of class. After the tournament, it would be revealed to the students that the checks and balances in the three branches of government are much like a game of rock-paper-scissors. Students were then asked to remove one of the three from their game, revealing how rock, paper, and scissors are all needed to balance one another in order to avoid one of the three from gaining excessive power. By connecting the checks and balances to a game of rock-paper-scissors, I was able to use a game that all students had great background knowledge of, and build upon that prior knowledge with the checks and balances of the government. This rock-paper-scissor game involved even the quiet students and the students who normally do not want to speak in class. I have learned over the course of my teacher education that getting kids up and moving is the best way to engage each and every student in the lesson.