Walkabouts Provides Peer-to-Peer Learning Experiences for Kindergartners (Virginia)
Profile
Tye River Elementary is a public school in Nelson County Public Schools in Virginia. It serves about 335 students from prekindergarten to 5th grade.
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Melissa Falls is a kindergarten teacher at Tye River Elementary in Arrington, VA. She has 15 years of instructional experience, of which 5 years were spent teaching first grade. |
“My kids are enthralled by Walkabouts — they follow along with the content and do the motions as if the characters are real and talking [directly] to them.”
- Melissa Falls
Goals
Melissa Falls’ school, Tye River Elementary, was introduced to Walkabouts by division leaders because they were interested in trying the innovative movement and learning platform to determine whether they wanted their elementary schools to commit to a full subscription. Falls admits that when she was first asked to try Walkabouts, she was skeptical, but that all changed when she saw how quickly her students engaged with the content.
Outcomes
Falls uses Walkabouts to supplement her core lessons in ELA and math. In the morning, she uses the platform to reinforce her ELA lessons, and then she uses a Walkabout again in the afternoon when teaching math. She says her students will remind her that it is time for Walkabouts because the lessons have become a favorite part of their day. “My kids love doing the lessons with the characters — they are doing the activities with Gia and Jax, not me,” Falls says. As much as they love the interactivity provided by the platform, she appreciates the differentiation that it offers. She believes there are many ways to use Walkabouts, and the way the platform is structured holds students accountable because “they have to respond to the prompts in the lesson through movement.”
Falls also uses Walkabouts to determine who needs higher level instruction or small group interventions. “Because you see who is mastering a concept, and who is struggling, you can divide them into groups to provide additional instruction.” Another bonus for Falls is that Walkabouts help with classroom behavior as well as the development of social, emotional, and life skills. An example she shared is “they have to follow directions, which is huge for kindergartners. Things like one- and two-step directions — walk, jog, run in place as well as positional directions, like ‘move to the right or left.’ These are big concepts for them to master, and they are learning it without even realizing they are learning it.”
Falls explains her students really love with the platform because they are engaging in peer-to-peer learning. They identify with Gia and Jax because they see them as fellow kindergartners, and that resonates with them and motivates them to learn with them.
Recommendations
This is Falls’ second year using the Walkabouts platform, and she says hopes her school continues to subscribe to it because it is intuitive for teachers to use, fun for kids, and even helps her prepare her students for Virginia’s Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) assessment.
