Once Upon a PE Lesson

The Magic Of Movement Words

After great success with storytelling in Early Years PE, I’ve been looking at how I can progress with this link between movement and language throughout primary PE lessons. A great way I continued this link was through the use of ‘Movement Words’ – so simple yet so effective! They allow words to meet experiences, emotions and situations and create the perfect opportunity for cross-curricular and active learning.

During a webinar with the amazing Dale Sidebottom, founder of Energetic Education, Jugar Life and Fitness Game Zone, we discussed the use of movement words to easily link movement and language and allowing for simple and meaningful cross-curricular learning.

Throughout this blog I would like to look at WHAT Movement words are, WHY and HOW we use them.

The use of movement words can be kept as simple as emphasising the word of the movement you want students to perform. You can progress by emphasising how you want students to perform the movement. Later, as students learn more about emotions you could begin to link movement and emotions. You could focus on the use of movement words within your PE lessons, or you could expand and create cross-curricular links to English lessons. The beauty is the suitability and flexibility.

When we get back to basics, students begin to link actions with words. The words could be used to instruct the action OR the experience of a movement may inspire the language used when talking and/or writing about an experience. Such a simple and easy way to link the learning of movement and language. I highly recommend using these words more within your lessons to watch the magic happen.

For a list of movement words to get you started visit https://onceuponapelesson.com/resources/


The Magic Of Movement Words



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Storytelling and movement words are great but how else can I ensure that movement within PE helps to develop a student’s language skills?