Can Movement Move Grades Higher?
Tom Johnson studies how the physical movement of youngsters affects their ability to learn. In May, Johnson, a professor of physical education at Albion (Michigan) College, and five students will travel to China for a research exchange at Tianjin Medical University near Beijing. For two weeks they will study the movements of a thousand Chinese school children, and will teach doctors and teachers how to apply child-movement research to their work.
Project First Step, a program Johnson created and has administered to thousands, tests children in seven fundamental physical skills, and "is able show a classroom teacher how improving balance and coordination can enhance a child's academic learning," he says. The seven skills are: balance; coordination; body image (spacial awareness); tracking and focusing; laterality (touching right hand to left foot); tactile touch; and audio receptive/audio expressive language.
Johnson himself was a C student in high school, but athletic ability and hard work helped him gain all-American status in diving and later, earn an NCAA football scholarship. Along the way he discovered this link between movement and learning.
"I don't think anyone else has discovered the connections that Project First Step has made--why movement is important to the social, emotional and cognitive development of a child," said Johnson.
But all of Johnson's research has been in the United States. " Now I will get to add skills tests of children of a distinctly different culture to the Project First Step program," he says. The comparisons may prove interesting. "In America," Johnson says, " kids watch 35 hours of screens each week--computer screens, video games, television. So our children don't have the same movement skills now as in the past." Johnson is working to find ways to improve these skills.
"By using Project First Step we can evaluate in one to two minutes how well a child moves. Then we can go to the child's classroom and give the teacher feedback on areas where they should concentrate," Johnson says. By improving a child's ability in any one of the seven fundamental physical skills, a teacher can improve the child's reading, speaking, an mathematical skills.
Through Project First Step, Johnson has examined 40,000 children, "and through our college students' efforts and the efforts of Tianjin Medical University we will be able to assess where Chinese and American students are in the learning and movement development at an early age."
Contact Tom Johnson, professor of physical education at Albion College, at 517-629- 0439, or at [email protected], or try Jim Klapthor in the college news office at 517-629- 0543.
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