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Thank you so much! It was February 2017 when I took a day off school to "figure out" how to publish this podcast. So, this episode is not only a thank you, but it is also my son asking me questions.
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Productive struggle means letting students wrestle with hard work without letting them drown. Dr. Barbara Blackburn shares when to help, when to hold back, and two strategies to try tomorrow.
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New teacher advice from three-time Teacher of the Year Eric Hall: build relationships before rigor, make your first call home a positive one, and take the teaching risks that make lessons stick.
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Teacher expectations shape what students believe they can do. Edward DeShazer was suspended 30+ times and expelled 3 times. Now he leads a school that went from one star to four. Here is how he closes the believement gap for students and staff.
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Therapist and former high school teacher Charle Peck shares the one question to ask a struggling student instead of "What's wrong with you?" plus a 30-second rapid reset you can do with the whole class.
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It originally aired February 1, 2018 as episode 244. This was not only the #1 of season 2 but the #1 of all time!
Suzanne Cresswell is an occupational and physical therapist, and she explains something most of us were never taught: that for some students, the need to move is not defiance and not a discipline problem. It is the vestibular and proprioceptive systems doing their job. Once you understand what the body is asking for, “sit still” stops being the right instruction — and the alternatives are cheap and immediate.
I think I know why this one topped the list. Every teacher has this child. Very few of us were ever given an explanation that made sense of them.
So many of us struggle with helping kids. But we need to give them chances to move. To play. To have fun. To be kids. Yes, learning is important, but the book Spark talks about a school that had kids play and have recess before math class, and scores went up. But hey, we can’t let everything be our motivation for test scores, but it is common sense to get moving in the morning first! Adults know it, and kids know it. Listen to this show and then figure out how to get kids moving.
And thank you all so much for listening to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and for sharing it with your friends! I appreciate your listening to the show and sharing it so very much! We have something special planned for our 1000th episode. My son interviews me. We recorded it Tuesday, and wow, it is so special. I look forward to seeing what he does with it!
Suzanne’s free eBook — the one to hand a colleague who says a student just will not stay in their seat.
About Suzanne Cresswell
Suzanne Cresswell
Suzanne Cresswell is an occupational and physical therapist who has worked with unique learners for over three decades. Suzanne works to educate and provide proven solutions and strategies to those that parent, instruct and work with unique learners. By creating an understanding of unique learners and their learning behavior, she helps parents, teachers and the students themselves find the ability in learning disability.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Read the full transcript — Why Kids Can’t Stop Moving: The Neuroscience Behind a Student’s Need to Move (e994)
Announcer (00:00): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:05): We have so many amazing episodes on the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast over these years, and we’re approaching a thousand. Now, the number one is about students need to move. It’s titled Why Kids Can’t Stop Moving: The Neuroscience Behind a Student’s Need to Move. And this episode, well, it tops them all with 46,509 downloads. We have Suzanne Cresswell’s episode top in the charts. And this one was released February 1st, 2018. It was part of season three and it was episode 244. Thank you to everyone who has come on the show. We have so many guests who’ve appeared and every single show is important and had intentionality behind it. I hope that you will take a listen to all of our back episodes. I know a lot of podcasts take offline their old episodes and charge for that. But right now, everything on the 10 Minute Teacher is free. So I do encourage you to go back, listen to so many awesome episodes and guests. And now, let’s listen to why kids can’t stop moving. Today, we’re talking with Suzanne Cresswell. She’s an occupational therapist and physical therapist. Now, Suzanne, what is a unique learner?
Suzanne Cresswell (01:32): A unique learner is a little bit of all of us, really. Children and adults have their own way of making sense of the world around them. When we think of learning, we think of the sensory system taking in information visually, auditorily, tactilely. And each one of us has our own unique way of interpreting that information, but in general, kind of patterns of how the brain collects this information. And in our education model, we augment our understanding of the developmental model and teaching incrementally, you know, as the child can develop these skills. But a unique learner tends to be on a little different path. They tend to learn at a different pace. And the emphasis in my book, Unique Learner Solutions, is that these students learn differently, not incorrectly necessarily, but it’s a difficult thing sometimes to capture in our general education classroom where we’re focused on the curriculum and the standards of meeting certain timeframes that certain ideas are needing to be presented to the classroom. So the unique learner can be that child that causes the teacher to sort of take a deep breath sometimes when they think about planning their morning or planning their day, because this is an individual who doesn’t always follow the flow, the rhythm, the timing of the learning that goes on in general in the classroom.
Vicki Davis (02:53): Two of my three children have what I call learning differences. I don’t call them disabilities because my children can learn. They just learn differently. So would you say that someone who has a learning difference is a unique learner or not always?
Suzanne Cresswell (03:07): No, we’re talking about the same person.
Vicki Davis (03:10): So these children are learning differently. We realize that. Sometimes they’ll show it by acting out. Sometimes they’ll show it because you look at them and you know they’re trying really, really hard. They’re not understanding it. What do we do? Where do we start?
Suzanne Cresswell (03:24): I’ll start with the comment when they’re acting out. That right there requires a little more inquiry as to what might be motivating the child to act in a way that we would characterize as acting out. Are they physically moving frequently in their chair? Are they interrupting and are off topic? Are they head on the desk, not interacting type of acting out? And to go beyond that, to take it to the next step and start to look at what might be contributing to that particular, I’m going to call that a strategy on the student’s part. What I’ve learned in working with this population for 30 years in a medical setting and in a school setting and in sports setting with young athletes, some young people tend to develop strategies even on a subconscious level in order to assist their brain to stay engaged. We’re hardwired to learn. We must take in information. We must integrate that with past events, our memory, and process that in terms of our intellectual understanding in order to take the next step. This is something that is as necessary as breathing in and breathing out. So to make that essential process work for some of these children that have a different way of perceiving information, they come up with strategies. Some children require a heck of a lot of movement to keep their body going. And I’d like to explain a little bit about that if I might, but it goes into big fat neurophysiologic words, but I think it helps to understand. What do you think? Should we go there?
Vicki Davis (05:00): So, I mean, I know, for example, I have a lot of kids who have, you know, ADD or have other things and we’ll do planks in the classroom. We’ll stop and I’ll say, okay, we’re going to do push-ups, so you’re going to do planks, or I’m going to go for a minute, just get some of that energy out. Is that what you’re talking about?
Suzanne Cresswell (05:16): I want to tell you why you’re doing planks and why that’s working. But first of all, let me put my hands together and applaud you. That’s fantastic. So let’s talk about that busy child, the busy one, the hyperactive child of ADHD, if you like. Those are often the students that we’ll see in a general education setting. They’ve got good understanding of many of the academic concepts when they are in a situation that they can demonstrate that to the teacher. And yet they are at a little different rhythm than the other students. They’re moving more or they’re at the end of the answer when you’re still really looking to see how the child solves it in the process. These types of things that are, shall I say, some days it must be upsetting. I mean, it offers like another avenue for the teacher and sometimes that’s difficult to integrate. So it ends up being the language that the child is having an upset or an outbreak or what have you. So I totally understand the use of that language. But the interesting thing is to look a little bit beyond that. You see, in order to learn, it’s a very developmentally wired process, starting in infancy and moving on. And let me just quickly take you back. Okay, infancy. First of all, we’re moving out of a buoyant environment inside our mommy’s womb. And the first experience we have, the first neurologic thing that our brain understands is the gravitational pull of the Earth’s surface, having moved from the buoyancy. That’s the very first thing that happens, and the brain connects with that feeling and then must tell the muscles and joints what to do in order to respond to gravity. So rather than going, if you don’t mind my saying, kind of plop, splat, they need to figure out that’s gravity. And I need to tell my head, neck, and arms basically to do a little bit of a plank if I’m on my tummy so I can lift my head and continue breathing and then ultimately move to a source of food and that tactile nurturing. Well, that right there, that feeling gravity and then telling your muscles and joints what to do is as part of our sensory system that we have senses, taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. But these two senses, feeling gravity, it’s a word called the vestibular system, and feeling your muscles and joints respond to your commands, if you will, is the proprioceptive system. We continue to feed the vestibular and proprioceptive system. We continue to feed our sense of feeling gravity operate on our body, feeling our muscles and joints respond optimally to gravity all of our life. But we move it to a part of a brain that we don’t really interact with that much. That’s why we like walking. That’s why we like exercise. That’s why we like yoga as adults. These are things that we do, we bring into our life. It’s in our mind, in our body, in our muscles and so forth. That’s why you’re doing planks for these kids, because you’re stimulating their proprioceptive center. You’re stimulating their vestibular center. And the children that require movement, that are moving in the class at a different rhythm, different rate, and moving at all when the other children are sitting still, this is a child that needs to interact with the vestibular center and the proprioceptive center in order to keep the brain charged for learning. And understanding that, then we can create a safe way for that child to be able to function in a social classroom environment if they need movement. Then we provide them with perhaps a seat pan cushion that’s slightly inflated so that they can move and yet they’re physically within their seat so they’re not interrupting others. Some classrooms will obtain the yoga ball, the therapy ball and find a collar for it so it doesn’t roll anywhere. And the student then will sit on the ball. And of course, if you’re sitting on a round chair, a round surface, your brain is continually interacting with the gravitational pull of the Earth’s surface and your body’s ability to respond to those movements. And that continually feeds the brain and keeps the brain active in order for learning.
Vicki Davis (09:13): And, you know, this is so related to even flexible seating, isn’t it?
Suzanne Cresswell (09:18): Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, it’s very much the same concept. So we will provide, once we begin to understand that it’s a strategy, we look beyond the erratic behavior, if you will, and look at what that might be caused by, then we can provide solutions for the student. And then the student is able, in their unique way, to keep their brain and body geared up and continuing to participate in the classroom lessons and the learning that occurs. But my tendency is to walk into a classroom to see the student I’ve been invited to provide some assistance with and to look at the child basically as already perfect, if you will, and that they are doing the best they can in order to function within their circumstances. And how successful is that? And sometimes the way they’re acting is exactly what you want in the gymnasium, but not in the library. And they can’t tell that distinction. And so they need to be taught, you know, the place for things and how to be able to identify that. But while you’re doing planks, that’s putting pressure through the joints of the arms and hands. And that pressure is what informs the brain, the proprioceptive center. And overall, that kind of floods the brain with a calming feeling. When you think planks, when you think movement breaks, even if you think of recess and lunch breaks, that’s all the yoga in the middle of the day, if that has meaning for you, yoga, or that’s the taking the walk in the middle of your work day. That’s what we all need, but children even more need movement infused frequently during their day. Useful movement, the planks are wonderful. Other movement patterns that help learning readiness are that right brain, left brain types of movement as well, where you’re crossing your arms across midline and those types of movement breaks are useful in the classroom all the time.
Vicki Davis (11:21): Well, we’ve learned so much today. And the truth is that there is a reason so many kids can’t stop moving. There’s nothing wrong with them. They don’t need to be fixed. They don’t need to be just told to have more control. You know, I think as a teacher that giving brain breaks, giving movement breaks, giving flexible seating, this is all part of being a good teacher. And I think that Suzanne has given us a healthy way to view why some of our students just can’t stop moving.
Suzanne Cresswell (11:52): That’s true. Yes, absolutely. And I have information for you on our website, and I have an e-book for your listeners as well that they can access at our website, Unique Learner Solutions dot com backslash e-book. And it provides some red flags and it reviews what you and I were just talking about in terms of just scratching below the surface and finding out what’s motivating that behavior that seems so nonproductive. And the teachers are doing that now. The modern education model embraces movement. Very kinetic education model. It’s delightful to see. Helping a lot of different learners.
Vicki Davis (12:32): And it really does make a difference. So I hope that all of us will learn more about all of these different topics and introducing more movement into our classrooms.
Suzanne Cresswell (12:41): Excellent. I hope so, too.
Vicki Davis (12:41): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
The Top 10 of the First 1,000
As the 10 Minute Teacher approaches its 1,000th episode, I went back through the download numbers for every show and pulled the ten that teachers listened to most. This is the top of that list.
If this one gave you something to try this week, share it with the teacher across the hall. Thank you again for supporting the show. It is a family project, a work of heart, and something that has blessed our family and, I hope, has also blessed classrooms around the world!
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This is #2 in the Top 10 of the First 1,000 — the countdown of the ten most-downloaded episodes in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher. Across its first airing and four prior encores, this one has been heard 27,314 times. It is also the oldest show in the countdown.
It originally aired April 21, 2017 as episode 60. Nine years and more than a thousand episodes later, it is still one of the two most-downloaded things I have ever published — which tells you something about how badly teachers need this.
Rob Donatelli is a business and computer science teacher who gives five brain breaks you can run without buying anything, printing anything, or planning ahead: the backwards classroom race, 60-second pitches, face off, smartphone ping pong, and penny catch.
So many people now talk about “brain breaks” and there are many videos online that you can use to give students movement breaks in your classroom.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Read the full transcript — 5 Easy Brain Breaks for Your Classroom (e993)
Announcer (00:00): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:05): For our number two episode of all time, we’re going all the way back to 2017, when the show first started. We recorded an episode with teacher Rob Donatelli about five easy brain breaks for your classroom. This one received 27,314 downloads. Let’s learn. So today we have with us Rob Donatelli. Rob, what is a brain break?
Rob Donatelli (00:35): Well, I would say that a brain break is an opportunity for the students to take a break from the higher level processing of learning to really just kind of calm down, relax the brain, have some fun and refocus that brain. So when a teacher gets back into learning at a high level, the students can really refocus themselves and retrain their brain to learn at their highest potential.
Vicki Davis (01:03): You know, we just can’t keep going full tilt, can we? I mean, if an interstate’s at 100% capacity, it doesn’t move, right?
Rob Donatelli (01:10): Absolutely. And these students today, you know, when they come into our classrooms, they come in with so much outside noise going on, whether it’s Snapchat or their Instagrams or what happened in the hallway. So if we can hook our students either at the beginning of the class with just something fun, such as a story about what’s happening in the world or a joke or a quote or some sort of brain teaser to hook them in and to really get them going. That’s one of the best ways to, you know, kind of calm that mind down and get them ready to learn for the day.
Vicki Davis (01:41): Okay. So what’s our first easy brain break?
Rob Donatelli (01:44): All right. Here’s a really easy one that I actually just did yesterday. So you split the class. Let’s say you have 30 students in your class and you have 15 and 15. You split them up and what they do is they’re going to do a backward race through the room. So if you have two sides, and my room is set up in pods, I have eight different stations of four students at them. And what they have to do is they have to race backwards through zigzagging through the desk and they cannot touch a chair. They cannot touch a desk, but they have to go back. And the students look at you kind of like you’re crazy at first. A lot of fun to get the whole class involved.
Vicki Davis (02:21): Wow, that almost sounds like it would be dangerous in some way. So I guess that kind of helps them just reset their brain.
Rob Donatelli (02:29): Absolutely. And when they stay from their chair, it really just kind of helps the blood flow and dopamine, which really helps them refocus to get back into the learning.
Vicki Davis (02:41): Okay, Rob, so what’s your second idea?
Rob Donatelli (02:43): Second idea is to get the students to just get up. And I don’t think our students today enough have an opportunity to just kind of talk and speak and work on those soft skills. So the second one is called 60-second pitches. And you present the students with an example of something like sell your team or a few people on why homework is bad for your health. And you put a timer up on the board and the students have to go one student at a time has to speak for 60 seconds on why homework is bad for your health. And they’re not allowed to stop talking. So it really forces them to think through a problem and the students love it. It practices those soft skills. They get to work on their public speaking. So 60-second pitches is our second one today.
Vicki Davis (03:29): Cool. And they just do that to each other. So you’re not waiting for everybody to get through their pitch.
Rob Donatelli (03:33): Correct. They just do that to each other.
Vicki Davis (03:35): Cool. Okay. What’s our third?
Rob Donatelli (03:37): The third one is when you want to do just a really quick one, you have them stand up. And this one’s called Name Three Things. So I have them sometimes do a best of five because it goes really quick. And for example, I’ll have them face off against one person and I will say, “Name three fruits.” And if you and I were doing it, we would say, you know, it was an apple, orange, and banana, right? And if I beat you, then I won that round. And I’ll put out all kinds of crazy stuff. I’ll say name three brands of shoes. I’ll say name three states in the United States. I’ll say name three countries. And they just have to spit it out, and it’s really quick. It’s really fun processing. I love that one, and the kids always really get into it and get super excited.
Vicki Davis (04:23): Oh, fun. Okay, what’s our next?
Rob Donatelli (04:25): So actually last week I have long tables in my pods that we have and I went and bought some ping pong balls. I was out at the dollar store. I thought, man, wouldn’t it be fun if we took their cell phones and they played ping pong against each other on the tables just for like two minutes. So in their baskets at their pods, I have ping pong balls in there. And when I want them to stand up, they actually use their smartphones, the back of their smartphone to hit a ping pong ball across the table and they play ping pong with each other. And it gets really competitive. It only takes two minutes, three minutes. I usually say till five. And just works on those motor skills and kind of lets them decompress from all the info that we’re learning throughout class.
Vicki Davis (05:06): Oh, what a blast. That sounds like so much fun. Oh, okay. What’s our last one?
Rob Donatelli (05:11): All right. Our last one is if you have a bag of pennies, maybe a bunch of pennies laying around and you want to put them to good use. Nobody today really likes carrying around pennies. I keep a bag of pennies in my room for the penny arm flip. And what I like to do is I put a timer up on the board for a minute and the students have to put a penny on their elbow facing up towards the ceiling. And they have to, when they move the arm down, they try to catch the penny. And it sounds really easy, but it’s kind of tough if you don’t do it really quick. And I challenge the students to see how many can you get and if they can beat me in 60 seconds. And it turns very competitive. Some can do it, some can’t, but there’s definitely always some laughs to go around. And it’s a really enjoyable, just quick brain break 60 seconds.
Vicki Davis (05:58): Okay, so Rob, let me ask you this. What happens when somebody comes in and observes your room and they think you’re playing?
Rob Donatelli (06:03): Yeah, interesting question. We actually went from a model this last year. We were teaching 42 minutes and now we’re teaching 68 minutes in trimesters. And we were encouraged by our administration to really come up with some brain breaks because you want to be able to chunk that information. If a student’s sitting there for 68 minutes, just, you know, getting lectured to or doing a project, they really have a hard time. We know that through research, focusing even after 18 to 20 minutes. And so our administration is very encouraging to allow us to do these brain breaks and to challenge our students to be creative and get up and engage with each other. So it’s been really cool to have the support from that standpoint.
Vicki Davis (06:42): OK, here’s your brain break, Rob. Pitch all of the teachers out there listening for 40 seconds. Why does every classroom need a brain break? Go.
Rob Donatelli (06:51): Every classroom needs a brain break because the students are inundated with so much noise. And what the brain break allows students to do is really just take a break from all of that knowledge that is getting crammed into their brain through lectures and projects and discussions. It also improves their motor skills, creativity skills, teamwork skills, skills that allow you to build those soft skills with handshakes and talking to one another. And in a day and age where students are so inundated with their technology and they’re on it all the time, it really is fun to have them engage with one another in a fun and enthusiastic and creative and interesting way.
Vicki Davis (07:31): Teachers, to be remarkable, we need a sense of adventure. We have to shake up routine. If they’re doing the same thing every day, the same way all the time, and part of that we have because of our classroom procedures, but we do want to kind of mix things up and break the routine and make things novel and exciting and remarkable.
Rob Donatelli (07:51): Absolutely. And if I don’t do this, Vicki, they’re begging me. They’re wondering at the end of the period, when are we doing a brain break? So it’s really transformed the classroom and brought a level of energy that was missing in years past.
Vicki Davis (08:03): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
The Top 10 of the First 1,000
As the 10 Minute Teacher approaches its 1,000th episode, I went back through the download numbers for every show and pulled the ten that teachers listened to most. One airs each weekday through September 18, counting down to number one.
