Education Commons^™

Fostering Children’S Academic Development Through Movement-Based Learning Environments, Hannah Martin

Graduate Teacher Education

Abstract

This study investigated how play and movement affect young children’s learning in order to provide educators with teaching strategies that are effective and developmentally appropriate in supporting the whole child. Academics, standardized testing, and school readiness have been buzzwords in education since No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001. The term “school readiness” has been interpreted to indicate worksheets, memorization, and direct instruction to increase academic scores on standardized tests (Klein, 2015). The Common Core Standards for reading have dramatically increased in recent decades, including the expectation that children leaving kindergarten be comprehensive emergent readers (Carlsson-Paige, Bywater-McLaughlin, & …