Teaching

I started studying primary school teaching in Heidelberg in October 2022, focusing on German and French. It didn’t take long for a particular interest to emerge: movement-based learning. Having never been a big fan of sitting still in a classroom myself, I was curious about how movement could become a natural part of learning rather than something reserved for break time. I explored this idea in my first term paper, looking at how movement could be incorporated into French lessons, and soon found myself wanting to put it into practice.

During my teaching placements at two primary schools, I began experimenting with ways to bring more movement into the classroom, even in subjects like German. When introducing the letter i, for example, my students could hop along its shape painted on the playground or search for hidden cards bearing the letter around the schoolyard. These activities allowed the children to learn by moving, exploring and trying things out for themselves — exactly the kind of learning environment I wanted to create.

My interest continued to grow throughout my studies. In a later seminar, we explored the consequences of a lack of physical activity and experienced the benefits of movement-friendly furniture ourselves. By the time I began planning my bachelor’s project, I knew I wanted to carry this approach into another practical setting. I returned to the kindergarten where I had volunteered four years before, this time to teach some of the same children in primary school. Over four weeks, I introduced them to German as a foreign language, a subject they didn’t usually study at school. Since I had to develop the teaching concept from scratch, I once again made movement and play central to my lessons. When learning colours, for instance, we played Twister in German.

Looking back, movement-based learning became much more than an academic interest. It shaped the way I approached teaching and showed me how much children can learn when they are encouraged to move, explore and experience things for themselves. At the same time, I began to question whether this approach could truly flourish within a school system characterised by fixed routines, strict rules and the expectation that children spend much of their day sitting still. This made me realise how well surf coaching lends itself to the kind of learning I believe in, with movement and hands-on experience forming an integral part of the process.