Improve Students' Physical, Mental, and Academic Health with The Walking Classroom

First Presenter's Institution

The Walking Classroom

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Laura Fenn, Creator and Founder of The Walking Classroom, earned an MS Ed. from Hunter College in New York City and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from Duke University. She has over 15 years of classroom experience and developed The Walking Classroom with her former 5th grade students as a way to add exercise into their school day without sacrificing instructional time. The nonprofit program grew rapidly, won several national awards, and is now used by thousands of schools and OST programs across the country. Laura and The Walking Classroom have been featured at several national conferences, including Health 2.0, SxSWedu, and the 2019 National Teacher of the Year Induction at Google Headquarters.

Document Type

Event

Primary Strand

Positive Behavior Interventions and Support

Relevance to Primary Strand

The Walking Classroom provides teachers with an innovative way to engage different learning styles. All students love the opportunity to get out of their seats and move around, but students with ADHD, dyslexia, behavioral challenges, or struggling readers benefit the most when alternative instructional methods are presented that tap into their preferred learning style. The Walking Classroom benefits everyone physically and mentally, and it provides a way for non-traditional learners to access information and be successful in the classroom.

Brief Program Description

Walk, Listen and Learn! The Walking Classroom is an innovative, easy to implement, research-proven nonprofit program that enables students to get exercise while building core content knowledge. Students listen to kid-friendly educational podcasts on pre-loaded devices while walking. Podcasts incorporate health messages and character values. Free training and professional development.

Summary

The Walking Classroom is a national award-winning nonprofit program that provides students and teachers with an innovative way to get exercise without sacrificing instructional time. The method is simple: students take brisk walks (preferably outside) while listening to kid-friendly curriculum-aligned podcasts that are 15-18 minutes in length. Detailed lesson plans contain objectives, discussion questions, and comprehension quizzes for each podcast, so that when students return from their walk, the content can be reviewed and synthesized. At the beginning of each podcast, there is a brief health literacy message (generally < 1 minute in length), and a social-emotional theme is also featured in each podcast.

This session will highlight the research-proven physical, mental, and academic benefits of walking while listening to educational podcasts. Attendees will get to experience these benefits first hand when they go for a walk listening to a Walking Classroom podcast, and attendees will learn how to create a walking classroom of their own.

Evidence

https://www.thewalkingclassroom.org/research/

Erianne Weight, Ph.D., and a team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tested the impact of learning during physical activity on student short-term and long-term learning retention, cognitive performance, mood, and attitudes toward learning.

Research Results

1—Walking improves student learning and retention

Students demonstrated significantly higher levels of learning while walking and listening to podcasts vs. levels of learning when sitting while listening to podcasts, both in short-term, and long-term retention, as measured by performance on the 10-question comprehension quiz on podcast content.

2—Walking improves student mood

All positive-affect markers increased after walking and listening to podcasts and decreased after sitting and listening to podcasts.

Similarly, negative-affect markers all decreased after walking, demonstrating a strong positive influence of the Walk, Listen, and Learn program on student mood and attitudes toward learning.

Learning Objective 1

Understand the research-proven impact that exercise during the school day has on student physical, mental, and academic health.

Learning Objective 2

Understand how The Walking Classroom engages different learning styles and helps narrow the achievement gap.

Learning Objective 3

Learn how The Walking Classroom works by experiencing the program and how to create a walking classroom of their own.

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Improve Students' Physical, Mental, and Academic Health with The Walking Classroom

The Walking Classroom is a national award-winning nonprofit program that provides students and teachers with an innovative way to get exercise without sacrificing instructional time. The method is simple: students take brisk walks (preferably outside) while listening to kid-friendly curriculum-aligned podcasts that are 15-18 minutes in length. Detailed lesson plans contain objectives, discussion questions, and comprehension quizzes for each podcast, so that when students return from their walk, the content can be reviewed and synthesized. At the beginning of each podcast, there is a brief health literacy message (generally < 1 minute in length), and a social-emotional theme is also featured in each podcast.

This session will highlight the research-proven physical, mental, and academic benefits of walking while listening to educational podcasts. Attendees will get to experience these benefits first hand when they go for a walk listening to a Walking Classroom podcast, and attendees will learn how to create a walking classroom of their own.