Run, run, run around, run around, baby* ♪

It's hard to watch my kids fidgeting or falling asleep during a lesson, especially since my class sizes are so small - six students and fewer. Luckily I've been able to think of two rather effortless ways to include a bit of movement into class.

One: "Push and Pull"

This one works really well with the little kids - say, age 8 and under. If any of them reply that they are sleepy during the intial greetings (i.e. "How are you?"), halfway through the lesson I'll schedule a stretch session. I'll tell them to pair up (and join if there's an odd number of them), to hold hands, and then to push and pull each other. The first time I did this the kids got more fun out of it than I expected! They were so amused to see the strengths of their friends and, I'm willing to bet, themselves. One group of girls have since starting requesting that we do it in class almost every lesson! Plus, it is a great way to review basic vocabulary - "push" and "pull". I'm sure you could extend this mini stretch activity to include more verbs.

Two: Adding distances between points A and B

There's a board game from eslgamesplus I like to use. It's pretty good quality as a free .pdf and great for adding some light competition into learning. The students, for the most part, forget that they are learning because they are so distracted by the nature of the game -- to beat each other tothe finish and, maybe even more so, trying to beat the game itself. (The board game has a few "Start Again" spaces. Some of my students have had to start again three or four times in the same game!)

One day, I just decided to add a twist to the game play. It was a special Christmas lesson, so after introducing 20 or so holiday words, I scattered them on the floor at the back of the room. At the front of the room, there was the whiteboard, and in between the whitebord and cards, there was the gameboard and dice on a table. In order to advance on the board, they each had to correctly the word I gave them on the whiteboard at the front. Since they hadn't memorized the spelling yet from the brief introduction just before starting the game, they were allowed to run to the back of the room, find the word card to check the spelling, and then go to the whiteboard to write. Moreover, since they weren't allowed to bring the card to the board with them, they had to utilize some of their short term memory. If they wanted to skip all the running back and forth, they had to be sure to store the words in their longer term memory. Nevertheless, there was quite a bit of running back and forth and body movement -- a good change of pace from the usual stationary type of learning.

If your students tend to be restless or sleepy - try these tips and let me know how it goes! Or, if you have your own versions, also let me know in the comments below. I'd love to learn more ways to keep my kinesthetic learners engaged.

*Yes, I am aware that the lyrics are "runaway, baby", but that didn't work so well in this case... so bear with, please and thanks!