Pre-K Students Love Moving to the Fun and Engaging Content in Walkabouts (Virginia)

Profile

Northumberland Elementary is a public school in Northumberland County Public Schools in Virginia. It serves about 540 students from prekindergarten to 5^th grade.

Jennifer Johnson is a preschool teacher at Northumberland Elementary in Heathsville, Virginia. She has 28 years of instructional experience, of which six years were spent teaching kindergarten.

“My students love the characters [in Walkabouts], but what they love most about the program is they get to move, which makes learning fun and engaging.”
- Jennifer Johnson

Goals

Jennifer Johnson’s principal was looking for new ways to engage and motivate the students at Northumberland Elementary. She applied for and received a grant to provide Walkabouts for Pre-K through 2^nd grade teachers. As a Pre-K teacher, Johnson was interested in having a program that would allow her students to move and get their energy out as they learned. 

Outcomes

Johnson uses Walkabouts as a whole class activity. She says she uses the platform to reinforce the core curriculum she is teaching because the lessons help her gauge who grasps each concept and who needs more help. Johnson says that Walkabouts have not only helped her students grow academically but have also helped to improve student behavior. “It allows them to move and get their energy out while they are engaging with the content.”

Johnson has also used Walksheets (worksheets with a movement component) to assess students’ progress from the beginning to the end of the school year. Johnson says, “The Walksheets have been a really helpful tool as I have used them to do my VKRP (Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program) assessments to demonstrate improvement from the Fall to the Spring.”

Through Walksheets and the daily use of Walkabouts, Johnson can determine which students are retaining the material and which students need additional instruction.

Most importantly, Johnson says her kids love the platform and look forward to “playing” with the lessons every day.

Recommendations

Johnson has been using the Walkabouts platform for two years and says she highly recommends the program, especially for educators of young, Pre-K-age children because it is highly engaging, the students love the characters, and Walkabouts allow students do what comes naturally to them — move as much as possible!