March Like a Monkey

Movement & Diverse Learners

Traditional learning environments often emphasize stillness, passive listening, and long periods of seated instruction. While incorporating movement into these contexts can benefit all learners, it can be especially impactful for children who process information differently.

For these children, movement is not an “add-on” or a distraction from learning – it can be a lifeline that unlocks regulation, participation, accessibility, and learning readiness.

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Movement and Learning
Movement and Literacy

Movement Helps Diverse Learners Regulate and Access Learning

For many children, movement is not a distraction from learning. It is one way they regulate their bodies, manage attention, and become ready to participate.

Movement can support:

  • attention and focus
  • sensory regulation
  • emotional readiness
  • transitions into learning
  • active participation
  • executive function skills like impulse control and working memory

This can be especially important for children with ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, executive functioning challenges, dyslexia, or other learning differences. Traditional learning environments often expect children to sit still, listen quietly, and stay focused for long stretches of time. But for many diverse learners, movement is key to unlocking the state where learning is actually possible.

Movement gives children a structured way to manage energy and sensory input. It might help a child release extra energy, wake up when they feel under-stimulated, calm their body when they feel overwhelmed, or transition into a learning task with more focus.

In practice, this might look like stretching before reading, acting out sounds or words, using animal walks during a transition, pushing against a wall, or building movement into a group activity so participation feels active and natural. For readers of a certain book, this might even look like marching like a monkey while practicing letter sounds — turning movement into part of the learning itself.

For diverse learners, movement is not something to “get out of the way” before learning begins – it is part of how they focus, regulate, and participate. When movement is built into multisensory literacy practice, it becomes more than a way to “get the wiggles out.” It enables children to actively participate in literacy learning — not just by seeing and hearing symbols and sounds, but by touching, moving, and physically experiencing them.

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Movement Makes Learning More Inclusive by Design

What if movement was not treated as something “extra”, but became part of the learning experience itself?

In many learning environments, children who need movement are given supports like fidgets, movement breaks, wobble seats, or alternative seating. These accommodations are important, but they can also make movement feel separate — and sometimes have the unintended effect of singling children out.

While this may not always be possible, learning experiences can be designed differently. Because movement can benefit all children, it can become a shared and inclusive part of learning rather than a workaround for some — if everyone is moving, moving becomes a part of success for all learners. This idea aligns with the principles of Universal Design for Learning, which encourages educators to design learning experiences that are accessible to a wide range of learners from the start.

Movement-based learning can help:

  • normalize different ways of participating
  • reduce the pressure to sit still in order to learn
  • give children more than one way to engage
  • make participation feel active and accessible
  • support learners who benefit from movement without singling them out

This might look like a whole group acting out vocabulary words, using gestures for letter sounds, marching through a counting pattern, using animal walks during transitions, or inviting children to show understanding through actions, poses, or movement sequences.

Integrating movement into learning experiences can make participation feel more natural, joyful, and accessible for all children – without lowering the expectations for what is learned.

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Movement Can Make Reading Practice More Playful and Approachable

For diverse learners, traditional learning environments can create anxiety, frustration, or fear of making mistakes before the academic task even begins.

Many of the expectations of “good learning” — like sitting still, listening quietly, processing language quickly, following instructions immediately, and responding verbally — can be especially challenging for children who learn differently, particularly when several of those expectations are stacked together.

Movement can help change the dynamics of the learning experience. Instead of asking children to participate in only one narrow way, movement-based learning can meet children where they are by offering them more ways to enter the activity, stay connected, and show what they understand.

Movement can help children:

  • participate before they feel fully confident
  • enter a task through action, imitation, or gesture
  • try again with less fear of failure
  • stay connected during difficult or frustrating tasks
  • experience success in more than one way
  • build a more positive relationship with learning

Put simply, movement can broaden what successful participation looks like — which can be invaluable for learners who already experience school, reading, or academic tasks as difficult, stressful, or discouraging.

Even when a child is not ready to respond verbally right away or meet every expectation of “good learning,” they may still be able to copy a movement, act out a word, move with a sound, follow a rhythm, or participate alongside others.

In this way, movement can make learning feel less like a test and more like an invitation to join in, practice, and grow.

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