The Secret Connections Between Your Body & Brain

In this S5E12 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies conversation, literacy expert and author Gravity Goldberg reveals game-changing strategies backed by 25 years of teaching experience. Discover the revolutionary research that explains why student exhaustion isn't about tired brains—it's about expectations.

🎯 KEY INSIGHTS:
✅Students retain 76% MORE information when movement is integrated into learning 
✅The "two-thirds rule" explains why students get tired—and how to prevent it 
✅Simple gestures can boost memory, engagement, and comprehension across all grade levels 
✅Why sitting still actually SABOTAGES student memory and focus

✨ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
💡How to use movement to boost comprehension by over 50%
💡The actor's secret to memorization (and how it applies to your classroom)
💡Pre-test warmup strategies based on student anxiety levels
💡Why timers might be sabotaging your students' stamina
💡Simple manipulatives that transform understanding across content areas

Some Episode Mentions: 

• Ellen Langer - Key Study: Eye exam reversal study (starting with small print vs. large print changed prescriptions)
• Arthur Glenberg - Key Study: Reading comprehension with manipulatives vs. rereading (50%+ improvement)
• The Noices - Researchers studying actor memorization techniques
• The Body-Brain Connection: Evidence-Based Ways to Reduce Anxiety, Boost Engagement, and Increase Comprehension Across Classrooms
  
  CHAPTERS
  0:00 Introduction: The Fatigue Paradox
  1:00 Movement IS the Learning
  2:00 Meet Gravity Goldberg
  3:00 Ellen Langer's Eye Exam Study
  4:00 The Two-Thirds Rule Explained
  5:00 Gravity's Running Discovery
  6:00 Mental Fatigue vs Physical Fatigue
  8:00 Why Timers Might Be Sabotaging Stamina
  9:00 The Broken Clock Advantage
  10:00 What's Really Happening During Mental Fatigue
  12:00 Stamina vs Willpower
  13:00 The 76% Memory Boost from Movement
  14:00 The Actor's Secret: Blocking and Memory Tags
  16:00 Big Movement to Small Visualization
  17:00 Walking with Perspective Exercise
  18:00 Reading Comprehension and Facial Expressions
  19:00 Envisioning Strategies for Parents
  21:00 Decoding with Multisensory Approaches
  22:00 Fluency and Physical Tracking
  24:00 High-Impact Strategy: Intentional Gesture
  25:00 Why Gesture Beats Talking Heads
  27:00 The Manipulative Study: 50% Better Comprehension
  29:00 What a Body-Brain Classroom Looks Like
  31:00 Trust and Student Autonomy
  33:00 Play Meets Rigor
  34:00 Lightning Round Begins
  35:00 Pre-Test Body Strategy Warmups
  36:00 The Homework Position Secret
  38:00 Gravity's Personal Discovery
  39:00 Ending the Body-Brain Dualism
  41:00 Closing Challenge and Resources
  
  Join our community of educators committed to cultivating student success, inspired teaching, and creating inclusive classrooms with a pro-kid mindset focused on the whole child. Don't forget to  🔔SUBSCRIBE for more teaching tips, and 💬SHARE with fellow educators! 
  
  📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com
  🎵 Music: Benjamin

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Olivia: [00:00:00] Picture this, you are watching your students during independent reading time. About 15 minutes in, you see it happening. The fidgeting starts, the heads begin to droop. That glazed look, takes over. You think, ah, they're mentally exhausted, right? Well, what if I told you that fatigue has nothing to do with their brains actually being tired?

Today I am talking with Gravity Goldberg, and she's about to flip everything you thought you knew about student exhaustion completely on its head. In her 25 years as an educator, from science teacher to literacy coach to professor, she's discovered something revolutionary, a two-thirds rule that explains why your students hit the wall.

And it isn't because they can't handle more, it's because they expect to get tired. In our conversation, we dive into why making students sit still is actually sabotaging their memory. [00:01:00] How a simple arm position can change homework motivation and why the best thing you can do before a test might be having anxious students slow their breathing while having apathetic students do wall pushups. Stay tuned because here is what gravity discovered: Movement isn't the distraction from learning. It is the learning. Let's jump in.

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am so happy to have Gravity Goldberg as a guest today on the podcast, let me tell you a little bit about [00:02:00] Gravity.

Gravity Goldberg is an educational consultant and author of 10 books on teaching. During her 25 years of teaching experience, she's served as a science teacher, reading specialist, third grade teacher, special educator, literacy coach, staff, developer, and assistant professor. Currently, Gravity leads a team that offers side-by-side coaching and workshops that focus on teachers as decision makers and student-led instruction.

Gravity. I am so excited to talk about your most recent book today. I have it right here. It is amazing. The Body-Brain Connection: Evidence-Based Ways to Reduce Anxiety, Boost Engagement, and Increase Comprehension Across Classrooms. It is very relevant. We were just talking about how it spans Pre-K through 12th grade. I even think for college students. Um, [00:03:00] you're using it with some of your students, so just welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. 

Gravity: Thank you. So happy to be here. So happy to nerd it out with you and chat about the new book. Thanks for having me. 

Olivia: Yeah, absolutely. I start every episode by asking guests to share a researcher or a nugget of research that ties to what we're gonna talk about today. Can you share? 

Gravity: Sure. So I picked Ellen Langer, who I'll probably mention Ellen Langer several times. She's over at Harvard, and she had this one study that was replicated several times that's very counterintuitive to how I've always thought about teaching. So I love research that gets me thinking in totally different ways than I normally do.

So she had folks do the typical eye exam, which if you've ever taken an eye exam, it starts with the larger print and then gets smaller as you go. So the idea is it starts with easy and gets harder. And then she had people do the same exact thing, but she reversed it. So the tiny print was first, and then it got easier.

So it went from harder to easier. [00:04:00] And people's entire prescriptions and quote unquote visibility challenges went away. We tend to think that if we start with easy and work our way to hard, that that is the way to build proficiency, but some of her research has flipped this on its head that actually when we are the most fresh, the most open, and when we expect things to be easy, basically the finding is we expect the easy thing to happen first. 

So when we get the hard thing first. We're sometimes more able to do it. So it's gotten me really, really thinking differently about tech selection and not always starting with the easier text before the harder text. Sometimes throwing students right into challenging problems first. I'm not saying it's a hundred percent of the time, but it's worth experimenting with.

Olivia: It shifts perfectly into what I wanted to ask you first, because you completely flip on its head what we've always known about mental fatigue or that idea of [00:05:00] even learning fatigue. And so I'd love to start the conversation off with your two thirds rule and to have you just share what made you realize that we have been approaching student exhaustion all wrong in the first place.

Gravity: So most of the ideas in this book came from my own experience as a learner. And then sort of like intuitively saying like, what is going on and then going to the research. So I guess the, the first part of what made me realize this was my life as a runner. 

Olivia: Interesting. 

Gravity: That like many runners were like totally stuck with our watches or garments or whatever, monitoring or time or pace or mileage. And I remember that I would always hit the wall like in the last couple miles of any race, even if I was totally prepared and shouldn't hit the wall, which is hit the wall means just like total utter fatigue. My legs do not wanna move anymore. 

Olivia: Okay. 

Gravity: And then I did a race one time where my watch wasn't on and the [00:06:00] race director, it was a local race, didn't put mile markers, so I had no idea how far I was into the race. And I found myself, and I'm gonna humble brag for a moment 'cause I don't win races, passing people, all of a sudden picking up the pace. And I came and I placed at the end of this race, and I never hit the wall. I never experienced that, like utter fatigue. And I realized I didn't get tired because I didn't know where I was.

I didn't, I expected to get tired toward the end, and I couldn't do that anymore. So that sort of stuck with me. And then I came across this, um, series of studies that Ellen Langer and her colleagues did, which showed that we think of fatigue as a physical experience, right. Like as a runner, I would get tired because my body got tired.

Olivia: Yeah. 

Gravity: Um, and what they actually found was it's the mental construct that we like to tell stories. We like to have things with the beginning, a middle and end. I need to know, [00:07:00] am I in the beginning, middle, or end of my race? Students need to know, are you in the beginning, middle, or end of the independent reading time, whatever it is that we're doing or the test.

And so what it actually is, is what they found was that people get fatigued in the transition from middle to end, about two thirds of the way through the experience because they expect as they shift past the middle of something to the end, that they are going to get tired. And that when you take away the knowledge of how long it is or where you are when you don't know, you're shifting from middle to end, you don't necessarily experience fatigue that way.

Olivia: That is so interesting. It also makes me wonder and think about when we're doing something we really love and I'm glad you love running. I am not a runner. My son is a cross-country runner, so he also shares that passion. I love painting. And if I am in the middle of painting, I lose all sense of [00:08:00] time and space. It almost gets into that idea of Flow Theory. 

Gravity: Yep. 

Olivia: And so I think that there has to be somewhere out there research connections between that two thirds rule and not knowing with flow for our kids. It's interesting. 

Gravity: Yeah, because probably in that flow experience, you don't have a set endpoint, 

Olivia: Right? 

Gravity: You are in the moment of that.

Olivia: You're in the moment. You're flowing, huh? 

Gravity: Yeah. So we do, and I say we, I'm gonna say me, but I've seen other teachers do this too. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Gravity: Things that we think are helping, like I used to put a timer up for, to build stamina for reading. Like, 

Olivia: So true.

Gravity: We're gonna read for 20 minutes today and like the, the counter would count down. That actually might be having the opposite effect that might actually be sabotaging them because they then are looking at the clock. Just like my body was knowing I have one mile left and I'm gonna hit the wall on the run. They're like expecting to get tired. 

Olivia: That is so crazy. 

Gravity: I always like joke 'cause I worked at a, in a classroom for many [00:09:00] years where the clock didn't work and I would like nag the custodial staff, can you please help my clock get back on?But now I'm like, maybe it was a good thing, like 

Olivia: Maybe it was. 

Gravity: Yeah. 

Olivia: That's so interesting. So then let's talk mental fatigue. Because what's fascinating for me in classrooms, whether it was my own classroom of children or whether I'm coaching, there is - mental fatigue is real. And there are some students that seem to be able to push through and others that just completely shut down. So what, you know, what's actually happening in a student's body as they hit that mental fatigue? 

Gravity: Well, I mean, it could be a variety. I hate the answer it, it depends. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Gravity: But I think it depends on where that fatigue is coming from. Right? So it could be a memory issue. And I know we, we, we'll probably talk about memory today, but it could be the kind of thing where if they're not allowed to move their bodies and access everything that helps them with their memory, then they're only [00:10:00] using a small part of their brain.

And that might not be working for them. It could be an attentional issue where they're having to spend all of their time on very directed, goal-directed attention that they're not allowed to use other parts of their attention. So I guess maybe that's not the best answer, but it, it depends. 

Olivia: Okay. 

Gravity: And I think some of the other things we'll talk about today might give us some hints of like, what do we do to figure out what's going on with students? But certainly having them sit and passively listen is probably not helping most of the students. 

Olivia: It's not, it's not. So let me, I'll, I'll even rephrase. When we're thinking of stamina. And you in the book say, stamina is not mental willpower. They're not equivalent. They're not the same thing. So, if we're thinking of stamina, um, what could we do with our physical body, with breathing, with fidgets that can help with endurance for our kids? 

Gravity: Okay. So I think with [00:11:00] stamina, the first thing is to not hyperfocus on where we are in time, like I said before. A second thing is to sort of like where I started today. Maybe sometimes start with the harder parts. Instead of like building our lesson to, and now we're doing the hardest thing the last 10 minutes of the period, like front load those some of the times. And then I think there are definitely ways that students can make sure their nervous system as it starts to maybe get overloaded can start to calm down.

And that could be things like gentle rocking. It could be using a fidget. It could be slow, intentional breathing where you exhale a little bit slower and longer than you inhale because that is actually calming down your nervous system. What it's not. None of these things are telling students in their like, intellectual brain, don't be tired. Focus. Because it's not a cognitive, um, like decision they are making. It's a physiological response that they [00:12:00] are having. And so it needs to be dealt with in a physiological way. 

Olivia: Okay. And so now let's shift to the idea of memory and how our physical movement can either enhance or sabotage. Sitting. Sitting is not good. And so it's just not for a million reasons. Uh, we do need to move, but how does sitting sabotage memory, 

Gravity: Yeah. In lots of ways. So I'm gonna give like a data-based answer and then I'm gonna give a story-based answer. 

Olivia: Awesome. 

Gravity: So, there are these studies that show, and I wrote the number down 'cause I'm someone, if I don't look at the number, I will forget. That when students are encouraged to use movement as part of their studying techniques instead of traditional just sit still memorization, they actually retain 76% more of the information when movement is involved. 

Olivia: Come on. 

Gravity: So this is not a small amount. 

Olivia: No. 

Gravity: The story. So [00:13:00] that's like the data. But the story part of it is this, when I talk to most anybody, when you need to remember something, probably what's happening is think about you figure out where were you when you learned that? Like you have this physical embodied memory of that. And so one of the things that we can encourage students to do. Is to take all this research we actually have from acting. So if you think about who needs to activate memory more than anyone, actors who need to memorize their lines. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Gravity: And there are these researchers, the Noices, who have studied this over and over again, and what they found was that it's not the sitting still that helps actors like in their chair and memorize their line. It's the blocking. And for people like me who were never in theater, who never acted blocking is the movement that's associated with the lines. 

Olivia: Okay. 

Gravity: So the way that they remember is by remembering I walked across the stage as I said this. I bowed as I said this. I scratched my [00:14:00] chin as I said this, that it's the movement that helps them remember their lines for a variety of reasons. And so it's the same thing with our students if we want them to remember it's the physical movement. It could be gesture, facial expression, full body movement, looking at something, connecting with something. But that's attaching what's known as like a memory tag. 

Olivia: Wow. 

Gravity: And that that memory tag is formed through the embodied movement, not just the like thinking in a still position.

Olivia: Okay. So then I want to have everyone picture a classroom of learners and if this movement is happening could it be small movement? Is it full body movement? I don't want people to start to get freaked out listening to this. And I also, it made me wonder, is the movement more or less significant based on whether a student is striving to thriving?

Gravity: So the answer to like smaller or [00:15:00] big movement is yes, there's times when it's big and times when it's small. 

Olivia: Okay. 

Gravity: So I well, I'm thinking right away of this high school English classroom I was working in, they were 11th graders. It was the beginning of the year where they're still trying to figure out their whole like social relational piece to everything, and I was asking them to get up out of their seats and do some acting out as a way to like reinforce what some of the literary devices were that they needed to just know, like, this isn't something you look up.

Like you should know the literary devices so that we can analyze and talk about them. I got one I acknowledged cringe me saying Cringe is cringe. I realize, but I was like, this is gonna feel awkward. We're gonna do it anyway. And one kid who had some social status was willing to get up out of his seat and move around the room. And then once he did it, I had them do it in small groups. We're not all watching each other. There's groups of kids who are doing this together and it was big. But then I [00:16:00] don't ever have to do that again with that class. After we have that, we have this like embodied experience of it where then they can visualize and envision that movement.

So it's not like every time I need to enact the movement and the studies were really clear of that is the actors don't need to walk across the stage every time for their line. That student doesn't need to like get up and act out irony every time. He was trying to remember irony because they had the physical experience. I actually tell them, like visualize what that was like, make that movement and, and that's a, a helpful expression. Make that movement in your mind. 

Olivia: Mm-hmm. 

Gravity: So that they still have it. 

Olivia: That is fascinating. And so I am picturing this link between the knowledge we want students to hold onto across all content areas, across all ages, and then thinking, what's the movement that could associate with that that they will then be able to visualize moving forward forever. That's so interesting to me. 

Gravity: Yes. I just did this with college [00:17:00] students, college seniors, in a seminar class where we were talking about this idea that we wanted to take on different perspectives, but we actually walked around the room with very narrow vision and very wide-angle vision, and I gave them some cues for that.

We walked around the room in that way, and then afterwards I watched and they started to gesture by making hand movements spontaneously without any prompting from me to match that. And we had this shared experience and a shared way of knowing that me simply defining the terms wouldn't have offered them.

Olivia: So then let's zoom in a little bit more on reading, because the book has beautiful photos of students gesturing and moving based on what they want to retain and hold onto knowledge or skillset wise, I want to take us to the home and for caregivers if their student is struggling with comprehension specifically, are there physical moves or movements they should be looking [00:18:00] for or strategies that they could help their students?

Gravity: Yeah, so when we're talking about younger students. There's things that I would be looking for right away. First is, are the students making facial expressions as they read? So when we're looking at picture books, like are they matching those facial expressions? Are they having reactions? So I have a 7-year-old at home and he's reading Dog Man, all these silly books. Right? 

Olivia: All the things. Yeah. 

Gravity: Which I love. And he's giggling, he's laughing, he's making the facial expression. That is not always a one-to-one, but that can be something to say like they are developing empathy, they are making social inferences. They get the book enough that they can make those facial expressions.

Um, something else is, you might ask them, especially as they start to move away from books where there's that clear one-to-one between the picture totally matches the words and maybe there's some pictures or they don't totally match the words, is to ask them what they are envisioning. What are you [00:19:00] picturing as you read?

And so one of the things I look for is some students just shrug. Some students retell, meaning they tell me what happened, but they don't actually describe what they're picturing. And then like a third group might say, oh, it's so funny. Here's where he is. Here's where it looks like, here's what he's doing. That there's more of like they're painting a picture with their words of that envisioning. And then maybe I'll take it one step further as those who are doing that, like describing, are they doing it from a first person perspective? Like are they taking on that they are the character or are they more watching it from afar?

None of this is right or wrong, but it gives you some information about whether or not they're actually understanding what's being said. Um, and so I think that can be really helpful is to watch their bodies and then to have conversations. If you have a child who doesn't wanna verbalize it, they can also sketch it.

Olivia: I love that.

Gravity: Just some way to access, like what is [00:20:00] it you were seeing when you read? 

Olivia: I remember when I was, uh, teaching kindergartners, most of them were bilingual and we would look at Peter's chair and just sketch on post-Its how Peter was feeling from the beginning to the middle, to the end of the story, and we would act it out. And it was just a beautiful way for them to acquire language that shows how we're feeling and emotions change. They're fluid. Um but I also think, I love the idea of caregivers observing their children and watching the different levels of engagement. Um, that's fascinating. And then thinking of decoding versus comprehending and fluency, are there specific movements that align or associate with those different reading skills?

Gravity: So I actually didn't write a lot about decoding because I think it's already pretty mainstream in this way. That many of the, the key phonics programs [00:21:00] are having kids tap out words on fingers, um, break words into syllables with clapping, maybe using, um, tapping their arms for different parts, that there's already a sort of mainstream understanding that a multisensory approach to figuring out how sounds and letters work is out there. 

Olivia: Yes. 

Gravity: And I would say to parents who don't know, asking their, um, child's teacher or a quick Google search of whatever program will let you know what's the movement associated also? That's one thing. Oftentimes if you ask your child, they'll like be like the shoulder shrug. Like how do you learn to read at school?

But if you say, how would you break this word up? They might actually, your child might be able to show you. So my son was in a school that used a program where they tap, and so I would see him tap. And once I saw that, I realized I could encourage it too. So these are things where I feel like let's just continue to support hopefully what's already happening in, in the school setting.

Olivia: Absolutely. When, when it comes to fluency, because I know fluency has [00:22:00] all different dimensions to it. Um, I go back to thinking of your acting example, but just for our students, even scooping phrases, you know, are there movements associated with that? 

Gravity: Yeah, so one of the things that, um, if you've been a kindergarten or first grade teacher, you'll know exactly what I'm saying, but for those who haven't, we notice that at first kids will point under each word, or even before that, they might point for each syllable 'cause they're not even totally sure that the word um, like umbrella is one word, so they might actually, not that they're reading the word umbrella. That's the best, not the best example. Kitten. Kitten that they might tap twice per kitten. 

Olivia: Right. 

Gravity: And then we teach them, you can tap once under that, that's one word, but eventually, and pretty quickly we want that finger not under each word. We want it to, like you're saying, scooping under phrases. And eventually maybe their line, their finger tracks the line. And then eventually it's the idea that like, my eyes can do this work on their own. But one of the things [00:23:00] I see even with college students is it's like those are the training wheels, right?

That they're doing those pointing and scooping. They haven't all, they don't all abandon that at the appropriate time. If your child is in third grade still doing those things, I would talk to their teacher about what might be going on because certainly in that first to third grade range, and I wanna give a range 'cause every child might be a little bit different.

They should all of a sudden be reading silently in their, not all of a sudden over time, they should be reading silently in their head, and that movement pattern that was physical at first, again becomes something that's visualized and not needing to be acted out in the same way. They might be picturing scooping, but they shouldn't have to actually be scooping. 

Olivia: And their eyes would be doing that heavy lifting.

Gravity: Yes. 

Olivia: Which is interesting. Right?

Gravity: Exactly. 

Olivia: So what is one strategy or movement that you would encourage teachers to do with their students that they could implement right away tomorrow that would have a pretty high impact?

Gravity: Um, [00:24:00] gesture, intentional, gesture.

Olivia: Say more.

Gravity: So many of us probably, well, it depends on your family of origin, your culture regionally. Like I grew up in a family where we do gesture a lot. When we intentionally gesture, we're thinking about, how do we, it does a couple of things. As the teacher, when we gesture, it's gonna slow you down a little bit in a good way to be intentional about your language that you're using. It's going to capture your students' intention more.

There's all these studies that, remember, we don't wanna remember COVID School probably when everything was video. What we know is that from studies that videos that had gesture, not just like a talking head without gesture, students retained far more than when they just heard the voices. 

Olivia: So cool. 

Gravity: So we're gonna keep our students' attention more, it's gonna increase their memory more with the gesture. It's gonna lead to more engagement because they're not just listening and processing auditorily. They have that [00:25:00] visual and that sensory motor processing happening. So, um, I would say gesture and then over time as a teacher because all of us get hors by the end of the day talking, talking, talking probably is, you can just use the gesture. Like if you have gestures that are intentional and repeat, then you can just do the gesture and not have to say the words and they know what you mean. 

Olivia: I love that.

Gravity: So there's lots of benefits and I don't just mean this at elementary level, at all levels for gesturing. 

Olivia: Yeah, and I, you know, I have a range of listeners, a range of followers. So for the sit down and focus traditionalists. How do you respond to that criticism that this is fluffy? 

Gravity: So I would say if you want them to focus, give them something to focus on that's not just auditory. Like whether we like it or not. We don't live in a world where like we sit down and listen to the radio every night and we have this very attuned, simple, you know, auditory processing that like we [00:26:00] have the ability and the desire to have multiple inputs. And so if you are gesturing and students are gesturing, that's that small movement that's gonna have a really big impact. It's gonna help with that focus. 

Olivia: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Um, and so just give us a overall global picture. If we were looking in on a very body-brain connected classroom, what would it look and feel like?

Gravity: Okay, I'm gonna give it zoom in and then come back out. 

Olivia: Perfect. 

Gravity: So one of the things that I have started to do is to think about, yes, the gesture, yes, the movement we've talked about, but also manipulatives. So we think about manipulatives in math classrooms and maybe elementary math classrooms as something that’s symbolic that students can move around.

The same thing is really important from a literacy perspective or a comprehension perspective across the curriculum. So I want to quickly describe why. 'cause if I don't describe the why, people write it off as [00:27:00] fluff. So the why is, um, Glenburg who was studying embodied cognition and continues to have a lab at Arizona State University has these series of studies where they had two groups for a control study where they, they were both given the same passage.

The first group, as they read, when they got to a flashing light, was told to simply reread and then given a comprehension quiz at the end. What we tend to do in school. The second group, same passage, same red light in the same place, but they had a series of manipulatives that were blocks and figurines and they were told not to reread.

Not that they couldn't, but that wasn't the prompt. The prompt was act out what just happens that you read about, and they were given the same comprehension quiz. The students who were able to do the acting out. Had more than 50% greater comprehension than the students who were simply asked to reread.

Olivia: That's so interesting. 

Gravity: When we allow students the [00:28:00] ability to make things, to hold things, to manipulate things, and they only have to do it once. Just like the big movement I talked about. After they have that, then they have this memory that they can come back to and they don't need to do it over and over, but it's, they retain it and understand it so much more.

So what that looks like is, and for those who are, have the audio I will describe, but if you have the video, you can see, um, I try to use sticky notes a lot where we can simply, this is the best manipulative ever. We can just move things. I also did all of this, um, for less than $10. I have these little manipulative pouches where I have blocks that I got at a tag sale. I have little Play-Doh. I stole some Lego figurines from my child. 

Olivia: I love it. We all have those around our house. I 

Gravity: I have a few other things and I have them out and at first, again, it can be a little bit awkward with older students, but over time they actually ask me, my, my [00:29:00] college students, when we get to complex ideas that they're trying to understand, ask for something because it allows them to build models, to move things, to compare things. And so to answer your like zoomed out question, what is a body-brain connected classroom look like? We are teaching all the same standards, all the same content. We have the same goals, but we are asking the question, how can the bodies be welcomed in of our students so that we can have more students experience success?

When we welcome students' bodies in, they move more. They make things more, they manipulate more. So that means there's more gesture. We might be moving around the room a little bit more. We still have plenty of time to sit and more quiet focused attention. Um, we have access to manipulatives and we're working on the same goals. We just have more tools and more ability to, to really integrate all that our bodies can bring into the learning experience. 

Olivia: Uh, that's, that's a beautiful vision and [00:30:00] I will say that my favorite classrooms to just sit and be a part of are classrooms where students even have agency and autonomy to say, uh, may I go grab this? Maybe they don't even ask. I just see them physically get up and get what they need, because there's a level of safety and trust between the adult as facilitator and the student as a learner to say, you've got this. You know what you need. But that takes time. It takes teacher, I think modeling of, you know, being open to this.

And that's what I'm studying, you know, these moves that expert teachers make and embody. And the idea of trusting that students can own and drive their learning experience, and I know you believe this to be true. It is so important. I think that that vision for all educators [00:31:00] across content areas, trusting that students know what they need and to at least expose them to these strategies, it could be incredibly empowering.

Gravity: A hundred percent. And will they be silly? 

Olivia: Of course.

Gravity: Will they sometimes not do the thing I want. Yes. And you know what I hear every single day in schools that kids are disengaged. You know, a great way to engage them, make it fun. I don’t mean fun for the sake of it, but like when you experience awe and joy, it's gonna boost your memory. It's gonna be engaging. And I find like when I put manipulatives out or I include like sometimes they gesture inappropriately. Of course they do, especially if you're a seventh grader. Sometimes they like play with the figurines in silly ways. But the vast majority of the time, they get over that quickly. If I don't make it a big deal and we rise back to that level of trust.

But to be honest, when I use these with adults, we sometimes gesture appropriately. We sometimes do? Right? Like it's just part of like sometimes bringing [00:32:00] lateness into the classroom. So I think it's also giving people some grace that students deserve that too. 

Olivia: They do. You actually just made me think of something though. When I spoke with John Hattie recently, he had shared, you know, there's a difference with joy or that idea of fun. I think this adds a level of rigor to the instruction because making and building those connections is hard work. You can be silly and fool around, but when you get down to it, what you're asking students to do is sophisticated work of that linking of knowledge with a movement. So I think that that's interesting. 

Gravity: Yes. Can I give an example so we can make that concrete for a second?

Olivia: Please. 

Gravity: So, at a young age it might be taking those figurines and acting out a scene that's not actually in the text that demonstrates their relationship. So there's a level of real rigor there. 

Olivia: Yeah.

Gravity: Um, I was working, I just led one workshop and this amazing, um, interventionist [00:33:00] reached out to me to say she was having her high school students study, um, in history class, different religions and how they were similar and different. And she put the blocks out and they actually made physical representations to represent how they were different.

And when she asked them about it, there was synthesis, there was an interpretation. They were using the vocabulary that in a way, if she would've only had them write an essay, they also had to do some writing. Could've almost, um, made it seem like kids had deeper understanding than they did. 'cause they can hide behind the conventions of language and like follow the recipe of how to write an essay. This was a lot more open-ended, so they had to be creative, which meant they had to really understand it. Those are two examples where it might've looked playful, but the play also brought in a ton of rigor. 

Olivia: I'm even thinking Gravity, we could have kids or students take photos of their representations and even label them. I mean, you're giving me a million different ideas of how we could take this [00:34:00] and run with it. Um, let's do some lightning round because I have some, I think great questions for you. I'm so excited. All right, here we go. Um, the classroom setting that is the worst for body-brain connection. 

Gravity: No view of nature. Not next to your friends. Everything verbal. 

Olivia: Okay. One movement that every student should do daily. 

Gravity: Slow, deep breaths. Feeling your feet. Make contact with the ground. 

Olivia: Are standing desks, overhyped or underused?

Gravity: No desks. We don't need the desks. But actually, if you want students to be creative, they should walk, jump, jog. Throw a paper airplane back and forth to one another. Not all the time, but if you want real creativity, the desk might actually be stifling. There's no real data that either of those is gonna have a big impact. 

Olivia: Whoa. Okay, so then I'm gonna go even further. [00:35:00] Um, here we go. Best pretest, body strategy warmup.

Gravity: Uh, so I've been doing this for many years, so it's depends on the psychology of the student. Students who are highly anxious. The way I talk to students about that is like, is your heart beating fast? If your heart feels like it's beating fast, then what you wanna do is some slow inhales, but slower exhales. So like inhale for the count of three. Exhale for the count of four or five or six for a few minutes. 

Olivia: Mm-hmm. 

Gravity: Or a few rounds even. If the other hand students have gone like over anxiety into like apathy, whatever. You know, head on the desk. I feel low energy, I feel sluggish. I'm not rising to the occasion. And there are always those students in the room too. They need to stand up and either do pushups against the wall if they're able, or do some like, um, pull down fast breathing where they're inhaling and exhaling super fast as they pull their arms up and down, like they're reaching for something in the sky to get their heart rate up.[00:36:00] Okay, so I'll often have them check in, get to two different sides of the room depending on what you need. You're doing that movement and then you're coming back to take the test. 

Olivia: Are inhales, are exhales distinctly through nose or mouth? 

Gravity: I would say if you're doing slow to calm your nervous system, I would exhale through your nose. I would use your mouth more if you're trying to do that heavy, fast breathing. 'Cause you won't be able to keep up with it if you're trying to up your energy. 

Olivia: This is highly contested in my house. Homework positions, couch, desk, floor. 

Gravity: I mean, no homework, but I don't have to answer that if there is. I know. I'm just teasing that, that was my fresh answer. Um, I'm gonna take one minute to answer this. So there's a bunch of studies that show the body position of your arm changes how much you engage and are motivated by the task. 

Olivia: What? 

Gravity: So if you, so they did all these studies where they first looked at people in grocery stores [00:37:00] that when you are pushing the cart and your arms are extended, you're less likely to buy certain vice things or certain things that would maybe bring you joy and engage you than when you're carrying a basket and your arm is flexed.

That the movement of having your arm flexed actually signals to your whole body that you want this more 'cause you are bringing it to you. Versus the pushing away of a cart. So I think it's more about like, how do we get students. Children in our homes. I guess more inflection. So like to me, I'm like trying to like secretly hack this and not tell my 7-year-old this research, but it's like hold your books close to you as you then go sit down somewhere.

But like being in a pushup position on your belly, I think might for some students, be more that like pushing it away and be sending the message to them that maybe this isn't something that they're highly motivated to do. So, I think it's like less about the place and more [00:38:00] about how they are pushing or pulling that homework into them.

Olivia: That is, and now I'm going to be watching my 13-year-old when he is doing homework tonight. And see, it's not so much about his physical position, more the, the arms and the, the pushing or pulling. That's so interesting. Um, all right. And then last one, your biggest body-brain connection, discovery about yourself.

Gravity: Anytime I'm trying to think my way out of something that probably feels like I'm stuck or overwhelmed, then I need to get up and move, go for a walk, get a sip of water, stand up and take a breath. That like the answer is never going to be found solely in my brain. That my body needs to be included in some way. Um, the power of a brain break is not that we ever shut our brains off. It's just like. Literally moving our body and stepping away. And that's true for the grownups as much as the children that we teach. [00:39:00] 

Olivia: I could not agree more. If you, um, we're, we're gonna close with this question. If you could change one thing about traditional classrooms and what you hope to see happening in classrooms with the body-brain connection tomorrow, what would it be?

Gravity: The goal of all this for me is to stop the dualism, the separation between body and brain, and instead to recognize it's not the cherry on top. It's not the extra, it's not the like SEL on the side. It's that all of the cognitive work we want students to do can only be accomplished if we welcome the bodies of students into the process. So we can make it a whole lot easier for all of us if we even just ask the question, like, how might bodies be helpful in this? 

Olivia: Yeah.  

Gravity: And I think even just saying the word body, to be honest, for me, after like sounds awkward, we don't ever usually talk about bodies in this [00:40:00] way, but when we even just consider them, I trust that there's a lot of intuition that teachers and students being simply asked that question will have an answer for.

Olivia: How cool would it be too, if that was like a building-based question or building-wide question. And so it's actually studied as part of a learning culture because Gravity, as you already said, this is not just for children as learners, it's for adults as learners too. So there's beautiful ripple effects I think this could have on an entire learning culture. And I am so happy you wrote this book. 

Gravity: Thank you, Olivia. I really appreciate that. Thank you for getting it. 

Olivia: Yeah, of course. I have actually a few copies now, so I, I carry books with me because it, there's power in having a book right at your fingertips that can help someone in the moment. And so thank you and thank you for speaking to it today. I appreciate you. 

Gravity: You're welcome. 

Olivia: Take care.[00:41:00] Schoolutions Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me. Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to solutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Thank you to my guest, Gravity Goldberg, for sharing why movement isn't the distraction from learning, it is the learning. 

And here's my challenge and invitation: tomorrow instead of using a timer for independent work, simply tell students to work for a while and see what happens when they don't know that they're approaching that two thirds mark, notice the difference in their stamina, then send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com and tell me how it went.

Make sure to grab a copy of Gravity's book, The Body-Brain Connection. You'll discover dozens more evidence-based strategies that will transform how learning happens in your classroom. [00:42:00] Don't forget to tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies that you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you then.