Activities that Practice Fine Motor Skills May Improve Attention for Female Students

Another study examined whether movement-based activities in the classroom can improve learning-related skills, particularly attention. This study took a different approach from the others that I have examined in this blog by focusing on the effect of movements involving fine motor skills. The study set out to test the Montessori theory that movement activities for children are effective in capturing their complete attention and that practicing such activities, especially fine-motor activities, can improve their overall attention. Interestingly, the study found an improvement in attention for female participants in the experimental group but no significant improvement for males.

A total of 68 kindergarten children from five different classrooms participated in the study, which took place in a suburban area in one of the Rocky Mountain States. All students received the regular kindergarten curriculum, which already included some typical practice of fine motor skills, such as cutting and drawing. There was no change for the thirty two students in the control group. The 36 students in the experimental group received addition movement activities that required fine motor skills. There were a total of fifty different activity boxes used in the duration of the study in which students had to move objects in a specific way using tools such as tongs or spoons. For example, in one activity box, students had to carefully place toy tropical fish onto different spool “pedestals” in a certain order using tweezers and then carefully replace the fish in the reverse order. The different activities were phased in and out of the classroom so that students always had several choices. Students practiced these activities for fifteen minutes a day for a total of six months. The activities were also available during free-choice times, so some students may have practiced them more.

All students in both groups were given a pre-test and a post-test using the attention subtest of the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). Female students in the experimental group showed a statistically significant improvement in their attention on the post-test, while male students showed no significant change. The reasons for this discrepancy are yet to be explored, but perhaps female students found the tasks more interesting and engaging. Hopefully further studies will discover similar activities that can help improve attention for male students. In the meantime, it may be worth it for early education teachers to dedicate some classroom time to activities that specifically practice fine-motor skills in the hopes of improving attention for at least some students.

Stewart, R.A., Rule, A.C., & Giordano, D. A. (2007). The effect of fine motor skills activities on kindergarten student attention. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35 (2).

Another Study Shows Benefits of Physically Active Classrooms

A study by researchers Donnelly and Lambourne explored the connection between physical movement, cardiovascular health, weight and learning. Researchers found that a simple classroom-based intervention to increase physical activity level also improved fitness, decreased bodily fat and improved learning for the participants. In the article "Classroom-Based Physical Activity, Cognition and Academic Achievement" the researchers described their long-term study of 24 elementary schools that examined the effects of implementing a classroom-based physical activity program called Physical Activity Across the Curriculum, or PAAC, over the course of three years on students' cardiovascular fitness, BMI (body-mass index to measure fat percentage), and academic test performance compared to a control group. In the fourteen schools that implemented PAAC, students participated in lessons from a variety of subjects that incorporated exercise into learning activities. The lessons were about ten minutes each, and participants completed about 90 total minutes of PAAC each week. The researchers found numerous benefits to the intervention group, including a lower percentage of bodily fat, a higher percentage of daily physical activity, and improvements in reading, math, spelling and composite test scores when compared to the control group.

The PAAC program was created around the philosophy that physical activity can and should take place in a variety of settings. The program encourages schools to move away from the idea that students must go to a designated place such as the gym and change into different clothing in order to exercise. Instead, PAAC promotes incorporating vigorous movement into classroom learning. An example of a PAAC lesson to learn multiplication describe in the article would be a fixed number of students (i.e. 5 students) running a fixed number of laps (i.e. 5 laps) and then having to calculate the total number of laps that were run by students (5 x 5 = 25). The PAAC program requires very little to no prep time for the teachers and no special materials. However, as evidenced by this study, the benefits were numerous.

In all my searchers for a PAAC official website, all I found was this study. It seems that this study was an initial trial of the effectiveness of the PAAC program, and hopefully it will become more readily available for educators. Nonetheless, any teacher with a little creativity and motivation could take up the PAAC philosophy and find ways to include exercise in their lessons. The nine lessons of about ten minutes each over the course of a week that was implemented in the study is not too daunting of a number for any teacher, and the possible benefits to students can be numerous. I hope to find ways to implement lessons similar to those described in this study in my own classroom.

Donnelly, J.E. & Lambourne, K. (2011). Classroom-based physical activity, cognition, and academic achievement. Preventative Medicine, 52, S36-S42.

Classroom Movement Interventions Can Increase Learning Behaviors

A 2006 study by Mahar et al., published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, examined the effectiveness of increasing physical movement in the classroom on promoting positive learning behaviors as well as the daily physical activity levels of elementary students at school. The researchers used pedometers to determine the daily level of physical movement in school of 243 students. One hundred thirty five of the students also received a classroom intervention called “Energizers” to increase their physical movement, while a control group of 108 students did not receive the intervention. The researchers tracked the on-task behaviors of students prior to and after implementing the intervention. They also compared the daily in-school physical activity levels of students that received the intervention and those that did not. The researchers found that the physical activity levels of the students in the intervention group was significantly higher than the control group and that the students that participated in the intervention had an 8% increase in on-task behavior. This study demonstrates that increasing movement in the classroom can have significant implications for improving positive learning behaviors and decreasing disruptions.

The “Energizers” intervention would be an easy one for schools to implement. In this study, teachers received only 45 minutes of training on the program. They were able to choose from a variety of “Energizer” activities each day. The “Energizers” lasted only about ten minutes and required no equipment and very little preparation. During the Energizers students stood up and engaged in movement. This simple intervention was effective in increasing the number of steps students took in a school day by almost 1000. It also increased positive in-class behaviors by 8% on average. Interestingly, students that demonstrated more disruptive behaviors had an increase of 20% in positive behaviors after the intervention. This is especially significant because research has demonstrated that students with more disruptive behaviors will often have more struggles academically (refer to my earlier blog posts). I wonder if providing in-class interventions such as “Energizers” starting at an early age could improve the long-term achievement of students that are at-risk due to demonstrating less positive learning behaviors than their peers.

This study is inspiring because it is very similar to the research I hope to conduct with my students. I plan to track the frequency of three defined off-task behaviors (inappropriate sitting, blurting out, and engaging in private conversation with peers) that cause me to pause and redirect students during fifteen minutes of writing instruction. I will implement a free online intervention call GoNoodle that provides videos of short, physically engaging “brain breaks”. I hope to see a reduction in off-task behaviors after implementing the intervention. If proven effective, the GoNoodle intervention could prove to be a powerful engagement tool for early elementary teachers.

Mahar, M. T., Murphy, S. K., Rowe, D. A., Golden, J., Shields, A. T., & Raedeke, T.D. (2006). Effects on a classroom-based program on physical activity and on-task behavior. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 38, 2086-2094. doi: 10.1249/01.mss.0000235359.16685.a3

Exploring the Connection Between Behavior and Achievement

A 2006 study that demonstrates the connection between kindergarten behavior and academic achievement is “The Impact of Kindergarten Learning-Related Skills on Academic Trajectories at the End of Elementary School” by Megan M. McClelland and Alan C. Acock of the University of Oregon and Frederick J. Morrison of the University of Michigan. These researchers sought to find the connection between how children are rated on a whole set of abilities that are deemed necessary for school success, which they refer to as “learning-related skills”, and their abilities in math in reading from kindergarten through sixth grade. They discovered that there is a significant correlation between how kindergarten students rate on a measure of learning-related skills and their scores on math and reading assessments all the way through the sixth grade. Students with lower ratings of learning-related skills had lower scores on the assessments than their peers that were rated higher on learning-related skills, with the difference between the two groups increasing through second grade and remaining steady through the sixth grade.

Five hundred thirty eight children participated in the study. The researchers used the work-related portion of the Cooper-Farran Behavioral Rating Scale to assess learning-related skills. The teacher had to rate the participating students on a 7-point scale on 16 different work-related qualities. Some of skills that this measure assessed were self-control, social skills, attending to directions and collaborating in group work. For the math and reading assessments, they used the Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised for the kindergarten through second grade years and the Carolina End-of-Grade tests for third through sixth grades.

The researchers found, through using latent growth curve analyses, that kindergarten ratings of learning-related skills significantly predicted the results of the math and reading tests as well as growth between kindergarten and second grade. They also determined that the ratings of learning-related skills and kindergarten through sixth grade readings scores correlated at levels ranging from 0.44 to 0.66 and for math scores from 0.59 to 0.67.

This study shows that the behaviors and social abilities of young children can have a powerful effect on their learning throughout the elementary years. Some students arrive at school already possessing certain characteristics and abilities that will enable them to be successful learners, while others simply do not have these characteristics and abilities. For those students who lack these “learning-related skills”, it is essential that the early education teachers find ways to engage and maintain their attention and minimize off-task behaviors. I believe that for those students that find the school transition difficult, the incorporation of movement into the learning experience can be a powerful engagement tool that can help these students overcome the academic disadvantage they may face.

McClelland, M. M., Acock, A. C., & Morrison, F. J. (2006). The impact of kindergarten learning-related skills on academic trajectories at the end of elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21.

The Problem: Disengaged Kindergarten Students Struggle Academically

There is a large body of research that shows that students that demonstrate disruptive behavior in Kindergarten will often have difficulties succeeding academically. In one such study, “A Structured Observation of Behavioral Self-Regulation and Its Contribution to Kindergarten Outcomes” by Matthews, Morrison, Ponitz and McClelland (published in a 2009 issue of Developmental Psychology), researchers created an original tool to measure students’ abilities to self-regulate their actions and also asked their teachers to rate the students’ behavior at the beginning of the school year. They compared this data with student assessment scores in the spring, and found that a higher ability to self-regulate behavior (as rated by the teacher and the observation tool) correlated with higher achievement scores in math. This study demonstrated that young students’ ability to self-regulate behavior can have important implications for achievement as well as for instruction.

The study examined 343 students in two distinct locations in the United States. The researchers came up with a new tool to measure levels of behavioral self-control based on a tool that was previously successful with younger children. The new tool is called the “Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task”. Students were instructed to touch their heads when ordered to touch their toes or vice versa, and to touch their knees when told to touch their shoulders and the other way around. This simple test assessed three different elements of behavioral self-regulation. Students had to pay attention to the instructions before performing the task. They also had to apply their short-term memory to recall these directions of what they were actually supposed to do for each oral command. Finally, they had to suppress the automatic response to do what they were told at that moment (for example, if they were told to touch their knees, they had to suppress the urge to touch their knees and instead touch their shoulders). This task could be connected to the challenges of the classroom, which often require students to recall and act on specific directions while suppressing undesirable behaviors. These abilities have also been tied to academic success or failure in various studies.

The researchers found that the “Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders” test correlated with teacher evaluation of student’s behavioral self-control. Students that performed better on the test and that had higher ratings of self-regulation by teachers at the beginning of the school year had higher math scores on end-of-the-year assessments as well as continued higher behavior ratings by the teacher. The researchers also looked at end-of-the-year literacy and vocabulary assessments but did not find such a correlation. They also did not find a connection with ratings of interpersonal skills. The researchers theorized that the reason that the correlation between higher levels of self-regulation is clear with achievement in math and not in other areas is that Kindergarten students often get exposure to vocabulary and literacy concepts in many areas of their lives, not just in school, whereas the learning of mathematical concepts is more restricted to the classroom setting.

One implication of this study and others that show the connection between academic achievement and the ability to self-regulate behavior is that it is of great importance that early elementary teachers support their students’ efforts to learn to regulate and control their behaviors. The skills that this study assessed with the “HTKS” task (attending to oral directions, recalling instructions and inhibiting inappropriate responses) are skills that should most likely be taught explicitly to help children become successful students early on. I also suspect that teachers need to focus on meeting the developmental needs of young students for movement and engagement to help minimize disruptive behavior and promote self-regulation. I suspect that when these developmental needs are not being met is also when students that find self-regulation challenging will act up even more, resulting in lower achievement levels. Perhaps if teachers regularly find ways to engage students with movement, all students will be better able to focus and control their behaviors, setting them up for success in the classroom.

Matthews, J. S., McClelland, M. M., Morrison, F. J., & Ponitz, C. C. (2009). A structured observation of behavioral self-regulation. Developmental Psychology, 45 (3).

Introduction to My Blog

The purpose of this blog is to research the connection between movement and learning in the early education classroom. I am especially excited to discover what research on brain development has to say about young children's need to move and play as they learn. It is my belief that too often children become disengaged in learning environments that do not meet their need for physical movement and that this disengagement can have a negative impact on both their learning and their developing attitudes about school. I hope that this research will lead me to incorporate more effective engagement strategies in my classroom that will improve the learning of my Kindergarten students as well as help them develop a positive outlook about their school experience.