Action Packed Classrooms

What do a bunch of dedicated teachers do on a Saturday in Dunedin?

Spend the day moving and grooving with Cathie Summerford of Fit 4 Learning! What else!

We were privileged to have Cathie Summerford come to Dunedin all the way from her home in sunny California to take us through the amazing power of combining physical activity and learning. I first attended a full day workshop with Cathie at the Learning Brain Conference on the Sunshine Coast (QLD) last year and we were so blown away by her message that we had to bring her out to New Zealand to talk to our teachers.

Cathie demonstrates powerfully the link between movement and learning and cites some persuasive research about how increasing movement in the classroom can help not only to engage students but to grow brain neurons too. One piece of research Cathie mentioned was the finding that voluntary exercise can even reverse some of the negative effects that bad diet can have on learning.

We learnt how to juggle for success and how to incorporate movement into everyday lessons to enhance learning. One participant said to me, "this is great, it's not another thing we need to do on top of our heavy workload but a way to do things better."

If you ever get a chance to go to one of Cathie's workshops, they are well worth while. As you can see from our photos, we moved and grooved all day and enjoyed every minute of it. Everyone was buzzing with great practical ideas that they could put into their classrooms the very next day.

technorati tags:cathiesummerford, fit4learning, taiorapuwai, dunedin, brain

Blogged with Flock