Movement-Based Lessons Provide Robust Academic Content (Minnesota)

Profile

Breckenridge Elementary School is a public school in Breckenridge Independent School District #846 in Minnesota. It serves about 310 students from prekindergarten to 6^th grade.

Renee Fedderson is a Crew STEAM Teacher for 1st and 2nd grade students in Breckenridge, MN. (Crew teams consists of five teachers, with two teaching math, two ELA, and one teaching STEAM.) She has 25 years of instructional experience, of which 6 years were spent teaching 5th grade. Six years ago, she began teaching as a Crew teacher for 1st and 2nd grades.

“Walkabouts lessons are just the right length, and I like the way they progress from easier to harder.”
- Renee Fedderson

Goals

As a Crew STEAM teacher for 1st and 2nd grade students, Renee Fedderson is always looking for creative content to engage and motivate her students. When she was introduced to Walkabouts through the district’s curriculum director, she thought it may be a great tool to incorporate in her STEAM lessons. She also liked the fact that she could use both 1^st and 2^nd grade content within the platform, especially for students in her What I Need (WIN) time groups.

Outcomes

Fedderson uses Walkabouts and the complementary Walksheets to reinforce the lessons she is teaching in ELA and math. While she is still somewhat new to the platform, she says she uses Walkabouts lessons to introduce concepts such as verbs and adverbs. For math, she has utilized Walksheets to help extend the lessons. “Walkabouts have really helped me see who needs help with certain lessons,” she says. “So, in the afternoon, during our WIN time, I can really focus on helping those students in smaller groups.” Fedderson has used other movement-based programs, like GoNoodle and Scholastic’s Dance Breaks, but she says that those do not have the robust academic components embedded in Walkabouts. By contrast, those programs are specifically designed to get the “wiggles out” and serve as short “brain breaks.”

Fedderson also said that the Walkabouts platform is intuitive to use, and she really likes the search feature because it makes it easy to find lessons on concepts that are already part of her lesson plan for the day.

Recommendations

Fedderson says she has only been using the platform a little over four months, but she already has plans to incorporate it more seamlessly next year. In particular, she plans to use the math lessons regularly next year. She also plans to recommend Walkabouts to other teachers because her students have really engaged with the content and have fun interacting with the characters.