Our lesson study team directed our research toward the use of movement to support academic language development. We knew we wanted to teach life science concepts to kindergartners in a way that would make their wiggles an asset. We wanted to design a lesson that would be founded in our previous learning around Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) and our developing understanding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL.)

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         We began our research by establishing a shared understanding of Universal Design for Learning and identifying the overlap between UDL and our goals from Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT). Universal design for learning is a lens to view lesson planning in which lesson design is based in supporting the individual learning needs of all the individuals “ potential barriers within instruction, assessment, and materials rather than the view of student-centered deficits.” (Kieran, L. 2019.) 

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         The UDL framework is broken into three categories. The framework categories are multiple means of: engagement, representation, and action & expression (CAST, 2018.) Engagement is about the way we motivate and excite learners. Representation has to do with ways information is shared. Action and expression explores ways students process information and demonstrate what they know. These categories are then broken into 3 rows to show a progression of skills. The first row focuses on accessing information, the second helps learners build understanding, and the last row is where they begin to internalize their learning. The goal is to design lessons that help all students move toward internalization and develop metacognitive skills to help them be independent learners (Gravel, J. 2020) 

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          Looking at this last row of the framework really solidified my connections between UDL and CRT. Helping students receive, process, and express information in a reflective and purposeful way is the goal of the ignite, chunk, chew, and review practice described by Hammond (2015.) The CRT and UDL frameworks are both supporting teachers with designing instruction that helps students develop skills to become independent learners. 

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          This research became even more salient when I interviewed one of my first grade students. The student is brave, outspoken, caring, active and has an independent education plan. I asked about his feelings toward the different parts of our lessons. When discussing rug time he said he starts to feel wiggily and that sharing his thinking lets him reset his wiggles. He also shared that he is allowed to take breaks when he wants, but that he does not like leaving the group. This student has been in lessons that make him feel like his wiggles prevent him from learning. Developmentally, elementary school students need the opportunity to move over the course of a lesson. The UDL and CRT frameworks would suggest that the lessons can be designed to consider this need an asset. Our team wants to use students' playful wiggily nature to build a lesson that values this quality and helps students' movements deepen their identity as a learner. Attention decreases through lessons and ignoring physical movement needs will only increase the rate in which students disengage from learning. For students that need breaks to regulate behavior, movement can help them feel less isolated by extending the group time between breaks

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          Inspired by our initial research, our team began discussing ways that we could use movement to reinforce scientific vocabulary, then our teacher identified this as a strategy called Total Physical Response (TPR.) We researched TPR and found our resources limited. The first TPR article we read was a study of the effectiveness of two foreign vocabulary instruction strategies, TPR and The Keyword Method. The instruction was not connected to previous learning and disconnected from previous instructional strategies. The assessment of effectiveness was done in isolation with a stranger. “Each group of students from the three selected schools had a one-time English lesson aimed to help them learn 30 English vocabulary nouns. (Khorasgani, A. T. 2017) The methods used in these trials directly contradicted our previous instruction on ways to support language learners. 

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          When we considered the tension between the article and our understanding of language instruction, it became apparent that language strategies must not be used in isolation and a variety of methods must be used to help students process new content. We also noticed the amount of items placed on the working memory was far too many and considered the impact of an excess of information on the affective filter of students. This study helped us begin to develop our lesson as an example of what not to do. We started to plan a lesson sequence that provided students with a variety of ways to engage with new learning about moth life cycles. We knew we wanted to provide opportunities to anchor this learning to previous schema and experiences. 

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          We were excited to use TPR as a strategy to support language development within a series of lessons that provided multiple modalities of engagement, representation, and expression. Looking for more, I interviewed a former colleague, Cathering Schrager, a special education teacher working alongside a general education teacher to make accommodations and challenge opportunities available for all their students in their Integrated Collaborative Teaching (ICT) classroom. She shared many ways she has built TPR into their classroom routines, skill building, and content instruction. Catherine splans movements that cross the midline of their bodies. The bilateral movements activate more areas of the brain and so pairing language with bilateral movements will provide more opportunities for connections to stick (Shrager, 2020.) Different parts of the brain are used for movement, language, and reasoning. Activation of various parts of the brain at the same time can inspire neural pairing and make this learning even more sticky. The "more frequent or more intense stimulation of memory a person is given, the stronger the memory associations connected and easier to remember.” (Fahrurrozi, F. 2017)  Students can use muscle memory to help them remember scientific concepts. 

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         As we began to pin down the content of our lesson sequence, we knew we wanted to pair moth life cycle stages with big movements. Most of our research had discussed TPR with foreign language acquisition and provided students with 1:1 movements tied to vocab terms. Scientific academic vocabulary provides us with the opportunity to use movement to represent more abstract concepts. The specialized vocabulary of science practices requires learners to not only have 1:1 definitions of a word, but often tie them to concepts or categories (ex: luster). Some words with accepted meanings have specific derived meanings in science (ex: selection). Understanding concepts can be dependent on the accessibility of the vocabulary used to explain. According to Smith-Walters, C. et al. (2016) “if we consider words are labels for much larger concepts, merely learning a glossary or dictionary definition is completely insufficient. A word having a fixed meaning is constraining for comprehension of content area language registers.” 

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          As we decided on movements within our life cycle lesson sequence, we remembered our UDL goals around pushing the lesson to help students internalize their learning. If we wanted students to be able to use TPR as a language processing strategy independently, then they needed the opportunity to practice developing those movements themselves. We considered the benefits to having students develop movements that represent transitions and the life cycle development. When students use movements to represent concepts, they must think about abstract pieces of concepts to make that connection. The use of TPR helps develop cognitive structures of symbolic representation. (Garner. 2008) This skill is even more developed as students design TPR moves for themselves and peers. When representing a concept through a movement, the student needs to think deeply about the content and representations of their understanding. We provided students with examples of movements done by their various teachers then encouraged them to try to develop their own movements. We started to consider the idea of TPR as a form of low threat assessment. 

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          With the transition to distance learning, we had some more opportunities to develop our thinking around the use of TPR. We noticed students had varying levels of comfort with the distance learning platforms. When planning the lesson sequence, we got even more creative with the modalities for expression, taking into consideration varying availability of resources. We wanted our lesson study culmination to be during a synchronous Zoom meeting. The school had established that these meetings are to build community and support connections. We wanted this lesson to bring joy and help students start to feel less distant despite meeting over a screen. We knew we could not introduce new content over a synchronous zoom meeting, so we decided this lesson could be an opportunity for students to express themselves playfully, using TPR as an assessment. Using UDL and CRT we were able to design a lesson sequence and assessment that built on students' assets. The joy and pride shown over those zoom meetings was palpable. The use of UDL strategies in lesson design made learning so accessible and non threatening, that  there was more brain space for students to enjoy engaging with the content. 

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Reference List 

 

Kieran, L., & Anderson, C. (2019). Connecting universal design for learning with culturally responsive teaching. Education and Urban                  Society, 51(9), (pp. 1202-1216).  

 

Hammond, Z. (2015). Information Processing to Build Intellective Capacity. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: promoting                authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. (pp. 128–140).

 

Khorasgani, A. T., & Khanehgir, M. (2017). Teaching New Vocabulary to Young Learners: Using Two Methods Total Physical Response               and Keyword Method. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 6(2), 150–156.

 

Fahrurrozi, F. (2017). Improving Students’ Vocabulary Mastery by Using Total Physical Response. Canadian Center of Science and                     Education , 10(3), (pp. 118-127). 

 

Smith-Walters, C. et al. (2016). Science and Language Special Issue: Challenges in Preparing Preservice Teachers for Teaching Science           as a Second Language. Electronic Journal of Science Education, 20(3).

 

Garner, Betty K. (2008.) Chapter 1 Cognitive Structures: What They Are and Why They Matter. Getting to "Got It!": Helping Struggling                 Students Learn How to Learn. Hawker Brownlow Education. (pp. 1-29).

 

Schrager, C. (2020, April 2, 2020). Personal Communication.

 

Gravel, J. (2020, April 8, 2020). Personal Communication. 

 

Student C. First Grader HTeX  (2020, March 11, 2020). Personal Communication. 

 

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org