Classroom Tales

The start of this school year with the move to year 4, our different school timetable ,team-teaching both classes in the afternoon and a range of other things has been hectic to say the least- I’ve had lots of different experiences, all worthy of a blog post in themselves (but some I’m unable to blog about for a range of reasons).  So being half term, I thought I’d make an attempt to catch up on my blogging a bit!

 

One of the things I’ve noticed teaching year 4, is how ‘restless’ some of the children are in the afternoon (not necessarily just as the afternoon goes on, but at the start of the afternoon too!).  This is despite me a range of different approaches in the afternoon and trying my best to make our afternoons as varied as possible, with lots of active, child led learning etc.  Whilst it wasn’t stopping us learning completely, it was certainly having an effect

 

A few weeks into the half term I had a think about why this could be, and reflecting on the children’s behaviour etc in the afternoon I came to the conclusion that the restlessness was due to a few things:-

• Some of the children had lots of ‘left over’ energy from lunch-time
• Some of the children (different ones to the first group) were simply getting tired after lunch.  This may be down in part to our schools new morning structure which some of the children have found to be more ‘energy zapping’
• If children had chosen to go on the field at lunch, they had to change out of their trainers at the start of the afternoon- this lead to a fragmented start to the afternoon.
• Some of the children were still missing their afternoon break!

 

I’ve tried a few different things out over the past few weeks- including using music to bring everyone together and act as a ‘calm down’- but, by far the most effective approach we have tried so far has been simple exercise.

 

Now, I’ve been aware of lots of people using whole class ‘exercise’ for a range of reasons, but until this half term never quite appreciated the effect it can have.   We’ve been using a service, which I really love, called 5-A-Day which provides a range of different activities- including 5 minute ‘work outs’ and 2 minute ‘cool downs’.  [Now I have to say the site isn’t free- it's a service we have started using this year- but there is a good free trial on their website]

 

So each afternoon, we’ve started with a dose of excercise.  We start one of the 5 minute work outs pretty much as soon as we get in from lunch- which means that those who have to change their shoes…

a)      Can come and join in when they have changed their shoes- much less disruptive then if we were waiting to do the register

b)      Have a incentive to change their shoes really quickly!

 

This seems to serve the purpose of both energising those who need it, whilst also burning off some of that excess energy that others have.

We then do one of the 2 minute ‘time-2-chill’ activities- which the children are encouraged to do without any noise- this calms down + settles everyone, and we know that as soon as the time-2-chill has finished everyone comes and sits down sensibly tin their carpet places, and we are ready to begin the afternoon.     The children have fun taking part (as do I, and any other adults in the room who also have a go!)  and I can also visually do the register whilst it’s going on.

 

Since starting the ‘exercise’ I’ve noticed our afternoon are much calmer, everyone is more settled- it’s certainly something we are going to continue after half term.  I think I’m also going to explore using it, or another approach first thing in the morning, to see if has any benefits then too.

 

I’d be really interested to hear how others use exercise in their classroom and what other services/tools you use- [I’m aware of lots of people using Just Dance on the WIi, and this is something I want to try out too, but not quite sure how it would work out].  Also be interested to hear any other approaches you use for trying to ensure a clam afternoon

 

TH