SPRINGDALE — Twelveyear-old Jahnaia Penix moved like a snowboarder on a piece of exercise equipment while studying a worksheet inside a new lab at Sonora Middle School.
Coach Trudi Spencer encouraged her to repeat the information in her mind while Jahnaia continued to work out for the few minutes remaining of the 45-minute session in the new Action Based Learning Lab.
After class, Jahnaia still remembered both the question and the answer when she exited the class. The worksheet had a pie chart showing the proportion of carbon dioxide produced in 1998 by the use of fossil fuels, including gasoline, in different regions of the world. One question asked about the percentage of the gas that came from North America, which was 28.2 percent.
“I kept on saying it over and over in my head,” she said.
Spencer sees 125 out of 853 students each day this semester in the new lab that combines exercise with reading, math, writing and science. Priority went to providing the lab for students who were the furthest behind in their classes, but Spencer has a goal of providing action-based learning to every student.
“Hopefully it will make a difference in those students,” Spencer said.
Spencer brought the Action Based Learning Lab and concepts to Sonora Middle School after attending a four-day training session over the summer. Money for the training and the $20,000 worth of equipment in the lab came from a Carol M. White Physical Education Program grant the U.S. Department of Education awarded the Springdale School District in 2013.
The training session required participants to move as they were learning, and Spencer noticed an improvement in her ability to pay attention, she said.
She learned how exercise prepares the brain for learning and realized that students at Sonora needed the program, especially the many sixth- and seventh-graders who are learning English or come from low-income families. Of the 853 students at Sonora, 84 percent, or about 710, are from low-income families. Sixty percent, or about 510, are learning to speak English.
“We’re not providing kids enough time and enough movement,” Spencer said. “We keep increasing academics. We need to place exercise in strategic places for kids to be better learners.”
Spencer explained to students invited to the lab the goal: To help them become better learners through exercises that also benefit their hearts, brains and bodies.
The lab is outfitted with a variety of exercise stations where students walk, step, cycle and ride a stationary bicycle. Exercise stations have platforms for displaying worksheets. Students also use flash cards, read books and sit at a writing station.
Teachers and administrators at Sonora are gaining a new understanding of the role movement plays in student learning, said Charlene Hornor, an instructional facilitator at Sonora who supports teachers and is working with Spencer to evaluate the impact of action-based learning on students. Early indications show the movement contributes to growth, Hornor said. Many students now ask teachers for permission to walk around classrooms while they read.
BRAIN SCIENCE
Middle-school students, like adults, often are under stress, a feeling that limits their ability to learn and express themselves, said Jean Moize, an educational consultant of 16 years who founded Action Based Learning. The company is based in Huger, S.C., but Moize lives in Emory, Texas.
Exercise reduces stress, making it easier for students to absorb information, Moize said.
Moize spent nearly 30 years as a teacher, mostly of physical education and then in classrooms with students in grades three through five. As a classroom teacher, she regularly included movement based on her background in physical education. She saw how movement helped her students relax and have fun, she said.
“I could see the kids learning better,” she said. “I didn’t know why.”
In the late 1990s, brain science research began to confirm what Moize saw in her students. One researcher told her that healthy, active children make better learners, she said. Movement helps in the learning process because students are using more of their senses, she said.
“It works for every brain,” she said.
Moize wanted to develop programs that would encourage the use of movement in learning based on her experience and what she learned from research on the brain, she said. She met Ed Pinney, who manufactured the Kidsfit exercise equipment that is used in the Sonora Middle School lab. Their companies have combined.
Action Based Learning Labs exist in schools in almost every state, and Moize leads training sessions every summer on Action Based Learning and related concepts. She’s also written Thinking on Your Feet, with 200 activities for teachers to use in the classroom.
Moize has met skeptics, but she also hears from teachers who incorporate action in their classrooms and see improvements in student learning and behavior, she said.
Evidence links exercise with learning, said John Ratey, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who specializes in neuropsychiatry and authored Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Walking, skipping and playing tag are among the activities that prepare the brain to learn best. In ancient times, Aristotle and Plato combined exercise with learning. Some employers are promoting standing while working.
“The only way we learn anything is to have our brain cells grow,” Ratey said. “Exercise is the best way we know to make our brain cells grow.”
Research in Sweden found higher levels of fitness associated with higher IQs in 1 million boys who were tested for endurance and intelligence as part of their compulsory military service over a 26-year period, Ratey said. Studies of the fitness and academics of California students have found students with higher levels of fitness tend to have higher test scores, Ratey said.
“We know this makes a difference,” Ratey said. “Many, many people don’t think that this is the case. It’s a matter of tradition and belief.”
Efforts to improve test scores have resulted in increased seat time in many schools, rather than more exercise and activity, he said.
“Sitting makes us fat, dumb and stupid,” Ratey said.
PILOT PROGRAM
The program at Sonora Middle School is a pilot for the Springdale School District, said Megan Slocum, associate superintendent. Spencer and other physical education teachers attended the training this summer to learn about research on movement in combination with learning.
Sonora students need time to acclimate to the exercise learning lab, Slocum said. At the end of the school year, student achievement data will be evaluated to determine whether the program had a positive impact on student learning and whether it should expand to other schools. She said those schools could seek grants to help pay for new projects.
Teachers at Sonora Middle School are taking steps to support movement in their classrooms.
Spencer placed exercise equipment throughout the building for groups of classrooms to share. Some teachers, including Samantha Waggoner, now have thick rubber bands wrapped around chair legs for students who need to move their feet. Waggoner’s students also share two sets of portable bicycle pedals.
Waggoner, a former physical education teacher, has students for reading and writing. Her students spend at least 30 minutes a day reading in her class, she said. Some students do not need the bands or the pedals, but others use them, she said.
“I have a lot of students that just have trouble sitting still,” Waggoner said.
During a recent class period with Spencer, Tayshia Oliver, 13, rocked back and forth while reviewing multiplication and then went to another machine that made her swing from side to side while she reviewed fractions. Tayshia, a sixth-grader, said she doesn’t want to go to the lab some days, but by the end of the 45-minute period, she often wants to keep exercising.
Tayshia said she has seen her grades improve in all of her classes since she started going to the exercise lab.
“She helped us with learning math and English and reading so we can get better at it,” Tayshia said of Spencer. “It helps a lot.”