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Roosevelt elementary students learn with a hop, skip and jump

An interactive path on the school’s hallway helps students focus better in class

A hopscotch-like path encourages play along the main hallway at École Roosevelt Park Community School, and is helping students become better learners in the classroom.

Students are encouraged to use the patterns on the self-regulating floor in different ways. School principal Andrée Michaud was inspired to create the course after seeing similar concepts being used in Quebec.

She designed the floor, and had Stuck On Designs create it, the school’s maintenance staff install it and students have been using it since the beginning of the school year.

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“It’s a loop-de-loop, you jump forwards, backwards, a design for when kids are antsy and distracted in the classroom they can do the walk-jump-play in the hallway,” said School District superintendent Irene LaPierre.

“Sometimes kids do it just for the sake of doing it.”

The hallway design has become a way for students to regulate themselves for learning. Michaud said it is a good way to help re-focus students who have extra energy or trouble focusing while in class.

“There are lots of kids that have different needs ranging from them being hungry when they come in to school in the morning to needing to have an adult to talk to and verbalize issues to,” Michaud said. “We also have those kids who are really wiggly and need to move.”

Michaud said the school is in the process of training the students to know when to follow the course and when they should ignore it and keep walking to class.

“Some students need supervision,” she said. “But some learned it so well that they can leave class, do the course and then go back to their classroom in a very short period of time.”

Early feedback of the floor has been positive. Lenora Santurbano, an educational assistant in Grades 3,4 and 5, said it has been very effective helping some of her students regain their focus. It has even helped to resolve a dispute between two students who were having a conflict in class.

“We took both of them down and they came back to class and they got along just fine after,” she said. “They just needed that one-on-one.”

Santurbano said having the additional tool makes it easier for teachers to their jobs.

“It’s amazing the difference in of the kids just coming back and wanting to learn,” she said.

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matthew.allen@thenorthernview.com

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