Climbing the walls for the three R's

EAST PROVIDENCE, RI (WPRI) - Fifth grader Zane climbs a rock wall inside The Wolf School’s Sensory Arena and reaches for a verb.

“Sitting at a desk is extremely boring,” he says, still climbing during this Language Arts lesson.

This is not boring but that isn’t the only reason behind this East Providence private school’s unique approach to mixing motion with core subjects.

“It is probably one of the only places in the country that does this as a regular part of the school day,” Head of School Jessica Robins Miller says.

The lesson we watched involved students scrambling over a swinging pad they call the boat until they made it to a large, oblong, yellow ball.

“And then you go to the peanut ball,” first grader Lucas explains. “And find a word and pick it up.”

From there, the kids ramble across the padded blue mat, toward a swinging inner tube where the instructors help them literally jump through the ‘hoop’ to grab another word. Then, it’s onto the synthetic rock wall with their little hands full of word cards.

“And you match your word,” Zane says, as he traverses across the wall like Spider Man. “You put a verb where it says verb.”

And thanks to a little Velcro on the back of each card, they snap the nouns onto where it reads noun on the wall.

“You can’t really move around at a desk,” Zane tells us, explaining why this kinetic learning works better for him and his classmates. “You can't climb on the desk or you get sent to the principal's office.”

The Wolf School , tucked neatly into a freshly renovated school building in a Rumford neighborhood, is a private school for K through eighth graders. Every student comes to the school with at least three of what Robins Miller calls ‘interferences in learning’. Movement is woven into the curriculum to help them grasp the content.

If they are not in the gym or the Sensory Arena, they might be gliding down the hall, belly down, on a blue board that’s equipped with rollers. In fact, the school schedules movement breaks every 90 minutes.

“These students in the classroom need to be moving all the time,” teacher Anna Johnson says. “They’re moving in their seat. They're moving constantly.”

Johnson adds that many students come to Wolf after their parents learn a standard school format doesn’t work for their children.

“The mere thought of school is anxiety provoking,” she says. “But they like coming to school, now.”

The goal is to teach them how to get into what Wolf calls ‘the green zone’.

“It means you are feeling good,” Lucas tells us.

“It's not too tired and not too energetic,” Zane adds. “But right in between.”

The obstacle course is a way to take advantage of the green zone while at the same time converting what would be a classroom activity in other schools, into activity.

“They're not just being asked to do a paper and pencil test. Sometimes, pencil and paper tests are hard for our children,” Johnson says.

Right Now, the Wolf School is moving into its 14th year, with an enrollment of 44 students who come from a 70 mile radius.

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