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Reed’s new book explores strategies to activate educational content with movement in ways that improve behavior, increase focus and enhance academic engagement and performance.<\/p><\/div>\n
From the team behind \u201cWalkabouts,\u201d \u201cActivating the Modern Classroom\u201d presents research and provides engaging, easy-to-implement classroom activities to help elementary-grade teachers address some of today\u2019s most pressing challenges. The book advances strategies\u2014and the science behind them\u2014to activate educational content with movement in ways that improve behavior, increase focus and enhance academic engagement and performance.<\/p>\n
The book also includes research-based strategies for helping kinesthetic learners and describes how moving while learning can help students with ADD and ADHD. The book offers descriptions of three web-based platforms that can be used in the classroom to integrate curriculum and movement and why and how this is beneficial to students.<\/p>\n
\u201cActivating the Modern Classroom\u201d also presents movement-based activities for language arts, literacy, math, social studies and science that integrate movement and improve student behavior, increase student focus, and enhance students\u2019 academic engagement and performance.<\/p>\n
Reed, who consults with school districts and educational organizations across the country, began developing movement-related lessons and workshops over a decade ago after the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was imposed. NCLB triggered a significant decrease in attention on physical education and recess by focusing almost exclusively on student achievement in defined core academic subjects.<\/p>\n
As states developed or selected standardized tests to hold schools and students accountable to these defined core subjects, content that wasn\u2019t tested\u2014such as physical education\u2014became a lower priority. This shift in focus prompted researchers like Reed to study the relationship between academic performance, academic achievement and mental receptivity in\u00a0a classroom setting.<\/p>\n
In addition to serving as faculty member in the Furman Department of Health Sciences, Reed is an Affiliate of the Prevention Research Center in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.<\/p>\n
Reed holds a bachelor\u2019s in environmental studies from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a master\u2019s in exercise and sport sciences from the University of Miami, and a doctorate in exercise and sport sciences from the University of Northern Colorado. He most recently earned a master\u2019s in public health from the University of South Carolina.<\/p>\n
Reed\u2019s research focuses on examining links between physical activity and cognitive function of youth, as well as investigating associations between the built environment and physical activity. His research appears in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, Preventive Medicine, Preventing Chronic Disease, and the Journal of American College Health.<\/p>\n