Help me give my students wobble seats and balance balls to encourage the wiggles while we focus on reading our favorite books and mastering mathematics.
My students are sweet, motivated, and love to learn. Our school is a small, rural, Title I school with 75% free and reduced lunch. Movement is an important part of our learning! Movement helps with focus and remembering new information. We use movement all the time in our lessons.
My resource room incorporates standing up and sitting down to answer questions, sign-language, and movement games to help my students focus.
They like to be active, and some have a very hard time sitting still for longer than 5 minutes! They often cannot contain their wiggles and end up distracting their peers or themselves. To reduce the distractions, we have one wiggle seat and a handful of bean bags. The choices they make in my classroom are often the only choices they are allowed in the day and often their choice of seating directly influences the outcome of the class. I have recently found that my wiggliest wigglers read more fluently while on a wobble seat. The addition of wobble seats and balance balls to my room would allow more choices and responsibility for my wiggliest but also the high school students that join us for more focused instruction.
My Project
With the new technology and advances in education, why are we still expecting our students to learn in the same fashion as our grandparents? With the inclusion of flexible seating, I am empowering my students to choose the place that best suits their learning style and allows them to focus on the real reason for coming to my classroom: learning.
Flexible seating allows students to take charge of their learning and make the choices that work best for them.
During independent work times, they choose a location in the classroom that works for them. Currently, my students are choosing to work in a variety of locations in our room such as: at different tables, in the reading tent, in the beanbags, or sitting or laying on the floor with a clipboard. Making sure students are comfortable is an essential component in motivating them. I have noticed amazing differences in my students when they are given a choice in their seating. They almost always make good choices about where they sit, are more engaged, and get more work completed than when they are just sitting at their desk.
My students are noticeably more engaged in their work and less disruptive of their peers when they are given a choice of where to work.
The products that I have selected will help my students by giving them additional seating options to make more effective learning choices. The wobble stools will be extremely beneficial for some students that just need to get the wiggles out. They can also be used as an alternative chair if needed!
I have seen how choice can positively affect my students work and demeanor and hope that the additional options will help us grow even more!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Weigt and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
