NIHR
University of Exeter
Tools for Schools
Channelling Energy



Channelling Energy

Welcome to the main page for the Channelling Energy module. This module is about supporting students to be as active or fidgety as they naturally are and engage with school and the classroom successfully.

Browse and select the strategies in this module below:

Moving is grooving

This strategy involves creating and customising a movement menu for your class and formalising ways for students to ask you for permission for a movement break

  • Classroom activity
  • And/or individual (personalised) for the toolkit student
  • Gathering lots of ideas in one place

Feet off the ground

This activity is for a whole class or small group to understand why and when you can learn and move at the same time. This strategy is useful to do with or before ‘moving is grooving’

  • Classroom activity
  • And/or individual (personalised) for the toolkit student

Building blocks for activity breaks

This strategy is for you as a teacher to understand about activity and learning and consider when and how you can include more activity and movement into your class’s week. It is about getting the whole class moving more as part of the normal school day

  • Teacher planning
  • Everyday use with toolkit student
  • Science

InterACTIVE tactics

This strategy is a classroom activity: an experiment to demonstrate concepts about moving and learning

  • Classroom activity
  • Science
  • Teacher reflections and discussion

Gauging engagement

This strategy contains ideas and ways that you can check in to see if your student is learning, even if it does not look like conventional learning or attention

  • Everyday use with toolkit student
  • Classroom guidelines

Equal contributions

This strategy is to give you ideas about how you can build in contributions from a lot of different students with different needs so that everyone’s voice is heard and your classroom is as inclusive as it can be. It’s about promoting and modelling positive socially inclusive behaviour, and supporting children with individual differences to be an equal peer contributor

  • Teacher planning
  • Everyday use with toolkit student

Negative No-Nos

This strategy is to help you support the toolkit student when they have had a negative interaction with a peer at school, helping the student to feel in control. There are other strategies in this module that focus on building positive peer relationships, this one is about managing and learning from the negatives

  • Everyday use with toolkit student



How did we make these strategies?