How Do I Love Thee: Embodied Thinking

To me, embodied thinking means experiencing the world through your senses while also being able to experience the world through other individuals' perspectives as well.  This happens on a regular basis, with even the simplest everyday activities. The difference is that some people are more aware of this happening than others. It is important to take the time to practice the cognitive tool of embodied thinking because it allows for a different way in which we can observe the world. This leads to new insights and an increase in creativity.

 

I would group the majority of the students in my language arts class this year into the category of kinesthetic learners. These students are often labeled as overactive or hyper, but this is not necessarily true. These types of students simply learn in a different way. They really enjoy hands-on/minds-on lessons in which they can actually manipulate materials or even engage in role play. Sometimes it is difficult to always incorporate an element of activeness within my language arts lessons, but I sure do try. With this learning style in mind, I immediately thought of my class and how I could get them involved in embodied thinking. For this assignment, I wanted to try and engage my class in an activity to aid in the creation of my visual.

I chose to focus on a type of figurative language called onomatopoeia. According to Wikipedia, an Onomatopoeia is defined as "a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes". For example, slap--slam--fizz--bop are all words that sound like their action. Their action? Yes, these words can be acted out (in a sense). This is where my students come in. This week I decided to teach mini lesson on figurative language and specifically included the use of onomatopoeia. After the mini lesson came the small group rotations which includes the independent work period, reinforcement with the teacher, and centers. Centers are areas where the students can engage in fun activities to practice the skills we are learning about in class. The "Mystery Center" is where I chose to have my students act out select onomatopoeia terms throughout the classroom. To document, I took photographs of my students in action. The results are below! 

Knock, Knock

 

Crunch!

 

Stomping Away

 

Drip, Drip, Drip

 

The Click of the Keyboard

 

As one can see, my students were enjoying themselves and really experiencing the learning. As part of my closing for the lesson I had a brief discussion on embodied thinking and how it related to what we did in class. I made sure to take the ideas down to a fifth grade level. I value student input and gauge overall success on class assignments as well as through the content of the discussions that stem from the lessons I teach. To me, the feedback from the kids is just as important as the input from my principal. Overall, the students really enjoyed the activity and wanted to do more. I will definitely be looking for a variety of new ways to engage students in embodied thinking throughout my language arts lessons this year.