Getting Your Students Moving (with Matt Courtois)

TEFL Training Institute Podcast

Matt Courtois and I talk about how to incorporate movement into language classes.

Ross Thorburn: Matt, welcome back to the podcast. To start off with, why is movement important? Because I must admit, it's something that I try to include in every lesson I do, whether it's teaching kids or adults or even doing training for teachers, so for you what why is it important?

Matt Courtois: It's important for a few reasons. First is, a lot of parents and students sign up for courses at learning centers, because they want something that's more interactive and fun. That's one reason, I don't necessarily think that's the most important.

I think, with young learners, they have a lot of energy as well, and sitting and listening to a teacher for an hour is not a realistic expectation, they do need to get up and move around to work off some energy.

Ross: If you watch what students do when they're unsupervised. For example, if you teach kids and there's a break in the middle of the class, watch kids playing when they're not being supervised by a teacher, they're probably usually running around, so if you force them to sit down, you're going against the natural flow of what they want to be doing.

I don't think that means you mean to get the kids running around all the time, but I think need to get them at least doing what they would naturally do some of the time.

Matt: You can see them in classes with young learners especially, you can see their legs start to shake, like at that point, they can't focus on learning, they're focusing on staying in their seats and not running around. That's what they're focused on. They can't focus on whatever it is that teachers talking about. I don't think that's necessarily the most important reason.

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