‘Movement Breaks in the Classroom’ – Teacher’s Workshop

Co-ordinated by Stanford Creative Works (SCW): Regina Broenner & Daniel Hewson

When: Saturday 28 January 2017

Venue: Vista Nova School for special needs learners

On Saturday 28 January SCW ran a dynamic and exciting workshop for 16 teachers at the Vista Nova School in Rondebosch, Cape Town. The reason for the workshop was to promote this new publication and present it to teachers who can activate the content of the book.

We contacted Vista Nova as this is a specific school in Cape Town that caters for the needs of children who have movement difficulties such as cerebral palsy, loss of limbs and may be wheel-chair bound.

The principal of the school, Ms Peta Johnson was delighted to host us at the school. We ran the workshop in the main school hall.

I introduced Regina and Stanford Creative Works (SCW) mentioning David Krut Projects and our involvement with SCW since 2011. Regina then presented SCW in the format of a powerpoint presentation. She told the story of SCW through the eyes of a particular child called ‘Nathan’ who was dealing with social and emotional issues. She spoke of interventions and occupational therapy exercises that she used to build his confidence enabling him to integrate more effectively into the Stanford community.

Regina also cited specific examples that she uses with children in her lessons. This includes using a pool noodle cut into slices and attached along a rope. Children are then asked to move these disks across the rope, almost like a large-scale abacus. She also brought a tennis ball with a slit cut into it and a face drawn around the slit. The slit is the mouth of the face. In this exercise children must squeeze the tennis ball and insert coins into the mouth. This exercise helps learns with co-ordination and muscle tone in their fingers and hands.

We then had a short interval where teachers, Regina and I could informally talk about learning challenges and needs and artists and projects happening at DK including the print workshop in Maboneng, Johannesburg.

Teachers were also asked to write on key cards with the questions: What is learning? And what is your most valuable resource?

Answers to what is learning included:

• Acquiring knowledge through experience
• Exploring
• Discovery
• Retaining information
• Knowledge & wisdom
• Challenging yourself to know more tomorrow than you do today
• Gaining knowledge and growing
• Having fun, freedom and guidance
• New knowledge & understanding

Answers to what is your most valuable resource:

• Energy: connection with children
• Youtube
• My own knowledge
• Play
• Patience & enthusiasm
• Being flexible
• People! Kids, parents, teachers and stories
• My ability to adapt and think on my feet
• Your network
• The learners and myself

Teachers then formed a circle and Regina proceeded to illustrate some of the activities that are illustrated in the SCW book. One of these exercises was standing still and gently rubbing the whole body, another exercise was for stretching and alerting the muscles in the body. Elements of yoga have also been incorporated into these exercises.

After this workshop we thanked all the participants and handed “Movement Breaks in the Classroom” to each teacher. We specified that a lot of work had gone into the making of the book with the intention that it is used to its full capacity. Regina had also specially prepared a “muscle gym” document to help learners.

The principal was delighted to have SCW and DK Projects collaborating with Vista Nova and wants us to stay in touch and do further work with them. We hope that learners from the school can visit DK Projects in the near future to learn more about art and printmaking and to experiencing the other activities at Montebello.

The Future

SCW is expanding its work and is now offering workshops for kindergarten and foundation phase teachers. The content of the workshops are around the theme of how to teach creatively and bring movement into classrooms as a way to engage learners actively in the learning process, make learning fun and enhancing concentration through movement and games.

The workshop contents are the fruit of the open workshops, the skills development groups as well as the early learning program that SCW offers in Stanford, Western Cape Province, South Africa.