Move Around Together: Insights from the Minding Bodies Book Club – Week 5

Recap

This week, we were very excited to discuss Chapter 5 of Minding Bodies: How Physical Space Sensation and Movement Affect Learning. The opportunity to join the group both in-person and online was offered to participants as we explored our chapter for the week with an exciting experiential activity. This had us thinking about another principle of embodied cognition that Susan discusses: Principle 3: Our efficient bodies engage tools, technologies, and other people to extend our capacities. Engaging in multiple ways is essential to our capacities and the ability to move through the world.

Review

• If you missed our week 1 post, be sure to catch up on the details of our club and how we got started! In week 2, you can read about how we take it outside in exploring the power of nature on learning, and in week 3 we looked at sensory-enhanced and object-based learning. Week 4 led us on a journey of how we learn to move and move to learn. 

How Did We Enter?

To kick off our session today, Dr. Julaine Fowlin led participants through a facial expressions activity. Participants checked in with one another emotionally and non-verbally to get a sense of how our colleagues were feeling as we started the meeting. This easy, quick activity brought us together as a group before we jumped into the rest of our session.

Dr. Casey O’Neill joined Book Club participants both virtually and in-person to share with us the power of drumming. She explained the neuroscience behind the benefits of group drumming and how we can enhance learning through rhythmic drumming. During this time, she talked about how culturally and historically drums have been used to bring groups together.
We learned that drumming helps synchronize one’s brain hemispheres and can even cause interpersonal neural synchronization. It can help form brain connections and increase brain activity as well as increasing neuroplasticity.

After providing participants with the positive effects of rhythmic drumming, Dr. O’Neill led us through some group drumming exercises that demonstrated heartbeats, both regular and irregular. This opening experience sparked lots of conversations around potential use cases as well as linked to this week’s chapter titled “Move Around Together”.

How Did We Engage?

Dr. O’Neill’s impactful drumming experience sparked many conversations among participants. Organically, book club members began to throw out ideas and possibilities for areas of implementation. There was a buzz in the room as in-person participates began to bounce ideas off of one another and conversations took off.

There were discussions of getting a local high school band to campus and the possibility of student event in the horseshoe. The goal of this discussion was to make student orientation more exciting and engaging but also more practical for those who have to attend various orientations to give the same speech.

The book club facilitators were able to step back and let these natural, impactful conversations occur, as we know the power of change is in the hands of those who work closely with our students.

How Did We Exit?

Julaine led us on an investigation of an I5 Framework (Ignite, Immerse, Integrate, Introspect, and Impart). Each stage provides an opportunity to reflect on our practices before considering how to best implement each. She discussed the importance of the overall framework and asked the group to consider how they see themselves applying it.

How are you leaving? We would love to hear from you!

What ideas do you have for integrating movement in your classes?

Don't forget to be on the lookout for reflection on our sixth and final session, “Embrace Discomfort.” Members of our Instructional Design and Technology team will lead us through a conversation where we hear some advice from Dr. Hrach’s appearance on the Think UDL podcast before conducting an energized discussion about the final chapter.

Acknowledgement: Alex Walters contributed to the creation of this post.