With so much learning that needs to get completed in a modern day classroom, room 4 at Opononi Area School has taken steps to being active with their numeracy and spelling lessons.

Teacher Nicky Pirini-Rogers, has spent time delivering active lessons this term as a way to ensure that her junior class gets their daily fitness done while achieving other curriculum objectives.

Nicky says “we’ve added movement and physical activity into our curriculum time as part of our lessons to keep our students engaged. We still have our normal mat time and teacher time but a lot of our students have really engaged with learning while moving. We also get to incorporate our fitness time in with our learning time. Our kids really enjoy our movement lessons and this gives the class an exciting way to achieve our learning objectives. We are always after new activities that we can add to our learning kits.”

These are some of the activities the class takes part in:

Number run: in two teams - each child in both teams are given a number from 0-9 teacher calls out a number (say 59) two students holding the 5 and the 9 from each team run up and makes that number together.  The fastest team holding the number correctly wins points.

Number boats: Draw circles with chalk outside.  Each circle has a number in it.  Teacher calls out ‘Go’, everyone runs to fill a boat with the correct amount of people in it.  The aim is not to let any boats sink by the time the buzzer goes off.   Great for working co-operatively and collaboratively.

Letter vests: Write a word on a whiteboard and the studnets run around making that word. Or they work in a team to make a word.

Up, down spelling game: This is done either individually or in spelling groups. Teacher calls out a word and student/s spell the word out loud and do a squat as they say each letter.  As they say the last letter they jump up and do a star jump.

Room 4 at Opononi encourages all schools to add movement to their lessons as they have seen their students really engage in their lessons while being active.

For information about the activities that Room 4 from Opononi Area School does, feel free to contact Joel Quitta-Moses at joelq@sportnorth.co.nz or on 027 20 25 882