We love The Walking Classroom! I work in a private therapeutic special education school and many of my students have a variety of different learning styles. While my students are seventh and eighth graders, their reading levels range from first to fifth grade, so finding a common interest can be difficult.
It is incredible to see how The Walking Classroom has had such an impact on my students; their conversations, their ability to learn and retain new information. They enjoy getting outside of the classroom to learn different lessons. It is great to see them all walking and learning together. Many of my students have difficulties expressing how or why they like something, but when asked if they like The Walking Classroom, I receive a lot of smiles and thumbs up.
One thing that is really encouraging is to see how they reference different stories or lessons they have learned. For example, we were learning about Idioms (4-#7, 5-#3, Complete-#3). In our open discussion I asked if any particular idioms came from real life experiences. Immediately one student began nodding and sharing the story about how back in the day, when someone was guilty and was going to be hanged for the crimes they committed. They would stand on a bucket with a noose around their neck. Then the executioner would kick the bucket. It was incredible to hear them retell this lesson clearly while usually this is a student who isn’t comfortable sharing, occasionally stutters, and stumbles over their own words.
Another example is from a student who has difficulty retaining information in lecture form. They thrived listening to the lesson via The Walking Classroom. Not only were they retaining the information they learned. They were also engaging other students into conversations about the lesson they just listened to.
The Walking Classroom has truly been a wonderful addition to our school and I am looking forward to sharing it with many more classrooms at my school in the future to help reach and enable more students to continue to grow!
Lindsey Simcina
Teacher
The Cove School
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