FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS — Improvements to daily classroom effectiveness and student behavior have been noted since Unified School District 207 first implemented “move-to-learn” practices in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, schools more than a decade ago.
Shelly Swartz, district health and science intervention coordinator, said student-driven academic data and decreased behavior referrals have confirmed how beneficial the move-to-learn tools the district uses have been for students, and has also meant improved student behavior and self-regulation and students learning how to advocate for themselves.
The move-to-learn concept, combining exercise with learning, is backed by science: specific movement improves cognitive function and increases retention, among other positive outcomes. Possibly most notably, move-to-learn allows movement options for students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other factors competing with their school success.
“Kids want to be successful, they just don’t always know how — they don’t know how to ask for it, they don’t know what’s wrong. They want to be successful, but if they don’t know how, they can’t advocate for themselves, they can’t help themselves, and so the education is the big key — teaching the kids what is sensory processing, how does that affect learning, how does that affect your emotional responses or behavioral self-regulation. Once they know how specific exercise helps brain development, they are all about helping themselves,” Swartz said.
Project ARMIES
With USD 207’s Project ARMIES (Anchoring Reading and Mathematics In Exercise (Health) Sciences) grant, the move-to-learn principle has been expanded to include exergaming equipment in the schools. Exergaming combines exercise and technology, in the form of rowing machines and treadmills and other exercise equipment with video-game-type graphics to make the activity fun and engaging.
The exergaming room is referred to as the Move-to-Learn Lab, emphasizing its purpose.
“We wanted to hit home with the kids — yes, it is fun, but you’re coming here as a tool, you’re coming here to help yourself, to build brain cells, to help your focus, self-regulation — so we wanted to make sure it was called MTL Lab instead of ‘exergame,’” Swartz said.
In addition to the MTL Lab, the schools have various ways to give students access to movement throughout the school day, including movement pathways marked in the hallways and alternative seating that could include an under-desk elliptical or a wobble stool.
Student Testimonials
Swartz said she is proud of students who have learned to advocate for themselves and who have embraced the movement options to help themselves regulate their behavior, and that teachers, who have been taught about the benefits and uses for the movement options, are supporting those needs in ways such as allowing students to use strider desks, which allow motion while studying.
Eighth-grader Rachel Temple is one of those students who has been advocating for herself and sharing learn-to-move testimonials with her fellow students. She attended first through fourth grades at MacArthur Elementary School, where she was first introduced to exergaming, then attended an off-post school that was closer to her home for fifth-grade.
“I was bullied; I was not liked at that school whatsoever,” she said about her experience at the off-post school. “We had no movement stuff. (I was) never pulled out for testing; they never followed my (individualized educational program), so I had nothing, and it was so hard.”
When she returned to USD 207 her sixth-grade year, she said her test scores were initially poor and she was falling asleep in class. She said one of the things that helped with those issues was involvement in before-school science, technology, engineering and mathematics lab activities.
“When I started that, I wasn’t falling asleep in my classes, I was fully awake for the days, I was taking tests so much better, and now I’m at the eighth-grade level for my tests,” she said.
Rachel began using the school’s exergaming equipment when the STEM lab was no longer an option. She said the equipment is fun and engaging and helps her stay awake in class.
“A lot of movement stuff, it kind of gets boring after a while but (with the exergaming equipment), you have to keep your eye on it — when you’re doing a racing thing, you have something to look at while you’re racing.”
Rachel said having the choice to leave the classroom, walk the movement paths in the hallways, and scheduling electives like physical education between her core classes have all helped make a huge difference in her school days.
“My test (scores) started going up, and up and up and up, when I got that movement,” Rachel said. “Movement with me is like an adult with their coffee. Their coffee wakes them up. Movement wakes me up.”
She said she can find ways to incorporate things she is interested in, such as ghosts and the paranormal, into her writing assignments, but for subjects or projects that don’t hold her attention, Rachel said just standing up or moving her leg can help keep her focused.
“A lot of people don’t understand how ADHD works; they just assume that it’s just not being able to focus — that’s the big part, but there are more little things, like how it’s everything or nothing,” Rachel said, explaining that tasks like cleaning her room can’t be completed in stages. The same goes for homework. “If I only do one problem, and then class ends and I put it in my backpack, that homework doesn’t exist anymore — that just poofs out of my brain.”
Rachel said she will try so hard to listen while sitting still, but her focus on listening will cause her to not listen at all.
“I have such good hearing because of my hyper-focusing (that) I’m annoyed by small noises — tapping on a desk, clicking of the pen, even a power outlet that is making a noise, I’ll be able to hear that.”
She said as soon as she adds movement, like shaking her leg or using a pedal station, she can clue back into what is being taught in the classroom, and that if she needs to take a test, being allowed to go out into the hallway before the test or taking the test at a stand-up desk that allows movement can make all the difference.
Rachel said she has learned to incorporate movement in her life outside of school, too — biking after school, swinging at the park, and shaking her leg during church — and that doing so helps her sleep better, too.
Fellow Patton eighth-grader Cooper Schmitdke said he has determined his learning and self-regulation needs largely through experimentation. He began attending USD 207 remotely as a fourth-grader during the COVID-19 pandemic and then in person the next year at MacArthur. He said finding what works for an individual can go beyond movement.
“It’s not always a movement thing; it’s just what helps you focus. Sometimes it’s a fidget thing, sometimes it’s listening to music,” Cooper said, noting that he uses a headset that allows him to hear what his teachers are saying while listening to music.
Cooper said he has a hard time concentrating and that the school’s movement options help alleviate issues associated with anxiety and hyperactivity. He said he was given a “whole spiel” about how the move-to-learn activities would help him, including the benefits of crossing the midline to engage the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the helpful chemicals like dopamine that are released during aerobic activity.
Cooper candidly said his teachers would all hate him, and Rachel chimed in with “insanity,” for what would happen if they weren’t given the movement options. The students both said the level of annoyance for everyone else, inevitably caused by their coping habits, has also been reduced thanks to the movement-learning connection that the district recognizes and supports.
Cooper said one of the most significant benefits of the movement options has been prevention of undesirable behavior.
“For me, (teachers) would always just give me a reward system — ‘If you behave, this will happen’ – but I’m not going to behave, so nothing is going to happen, which was the issue, because the reward system doesn’t really work,” Cooper said. “What they have done here is preventative, as opposed to if you do good (you get) candy or something. It is solving the issue before it comes around. So, I misbehave in class less than I normally would.”
Move-to-Learn Beginnings
Swartz said she’d like to see more schools implement the move-to-learn practices. USD 207 has been sharing data and grant information with other districts, and students take the knowledge and empowerment they acquire at USD 207 to their next schools.
“This is the high end, because we had the grant, but we didn’t start that way,” Swartz said.
Around 2013, when Swartz was the physical education teacher at MacArthur, she started what she called a SAMS Lab, which stood for sensory integration, aerobic exercise, motor planning and sequencing, divulging that she called it a “lab” because she didn’t know how well it was going to work.
Swartz said the SAMS lab began out of the need to provide immediate intervention for students to proactively address their needs before unwanted behaviors manifested. Through professional collaboration with colleagues and her exercise science background as a PE teacher, Swartz put together stations that incorporated sensory processing with motor planning. Through the integration of multiple sensory systems being used at one time while performing motor sequencing, the students were “stacking,” or using multiple parts of the brain at the same time to create neurological connections that affect learning and behavior in a positive way.
The school began offering the SAMS Lab to identified students as a before-school program to help prepare their brains for learning.
“With the success students experienced from participating in the SAMS Lab, parents wrote some letters and went to the (school) board and said ‘Something special is going on at MacArthur with my child.’”
Swartz said parents reported seeing everything from a student who couldn’t read who was now reading to a child who couldn’t put on a seatbelt but who could now manage the task. She and her SAMS Lab students were asked to present to the school board, which resulted in district administrators implementing the move-to-learn concept in all of the schools.
“Districtwide we had enough success that when (Superintendent) Keith (Mispagel) and (Deputy Superintendent) SuAnn (Grant) had an opportunity to write the ARMIES grant, they went after it.”
Swartz said a lot of military-impacted students are now getting help because of that grant. In addition to local use, USD 207 staff have given move-to-learn professional development presentations at Department of Defense Education Activity conferences, and other schools have sought similar grants based on the district’s work.
“When we do stuff here and we teach the kids, then they take it with them to the next district, and then we also share with other districts, and so more and more districts are helping more and more kids by helping them understand how they can help themselves and how to advocate respectfully for what they need,” Swartz said.
She gave a variety of examples of how move-to-learn is helping students, from being a motivator for improved behavior; helping improve academically; and even having a social-emotional component for engaging with other students and making friends — and thus gaining confidence, and much more.
“It’s exciting that we’re helping kids — and not just helping them while they’re here; we’re helping them for the rest of their lives.
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