The Move for Thought elementary activities integrate physical activity with learning in the elementary school classroom. The activities can be used for any academic subject area. Each activity can be used to review or reinforce learning through fun and engaging movements.
Click on the picture below to download the activities.
Research
The Move for Thought elementary activities have been used in elementary schools and their effectiveness on motivation, math performance and levels of physical activity has been evaluated extensively.
This study included an 8-week intervention with 14 4th and 5th grade classes, with half teachers using the Move for Thought activities and half continued their teaching as usual (no added movement).
- As the graph shows below, even though all students improved on their math performance, using a grade-appropriate standardized math test, the students in the Move for Thought classrooms improved significantly more than the control group.
- Another significant finding is that the competence students had in math and their competence in doing the integrated activities significantly predicted their math performance at the end of the program.
This study examined differences in objectively measured physical activity levels between the Move for Thought activities (in integration with mathematics) and traditional lessons, with 77 4th grade students.
- The Move for Thought activities accumulated significantly more minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activities (MVPA), compared to the traditional classrooms.
- There is notable variability in the minutes of MVPA among activities with the most active Move for Thought activities providing 10.88 min of MVPA (“Find your Pair”).
- The least active but of longer duration at light intensity activities were the "Jump the Answer" and "Move Around" activities.
- Most of the Move for Thought activities provided on average five minutes of MVPA (3.83 min to 7 min) per activity per academic lesson.