Go Noodle

Go Noodle is a website I had heard of from many elemenary teachers and had seen it used a few times but had never explored the website for myself. Go Noodle is a website used to get you active, take time to breathe, have a brain break and also learn. As I entered the website I was greeted with a bright, colourful, easy to follow page. There were easy to read headers 

at the top of the page & pictures for every activity option. At the top of the website it will appear with tabs where you can choose what you would like to explore at that time you are using the website.  This allows you to pull activities that fit your needs and makes it easy to find what you are looking for. 

When I thought of Go Noodle my thought was that it was just for dancing and active brain breaks. The more I looked into the website I found an area that was all for just breathing and calming down, which many of our students need and sometimes teachers are unsure of how to do this with them. There are also tabs with videos for Pre-K to Grade 6, that have interactive videos created for that age group.

I remember when I saw this used in other classrooms the students loved the Kids Pop Videos. I went and checked out that section and I could see why they love it, it is younger kids that can relate to dancing to popular songs that they would be familiar with.

There are many different ways you could use Go Noodle in the classroom, the simplest being to put on a video as a replacement to doing a brain break with your students. You could interact with your students and give them choices of the videos they wanted and also participate with your students in the activities. You could have students go in small groups with iPads and have time with a smaller group of students each of them getting to choose a video which lets all your students have choice and also get to know each other’s personalities based on the videos they choose. You could incorporate the Go Noodle video into your lesson and have it be a fun way for students to remember and practice a concept you are working on, like math or literacy. There are many ways Go Noodle can be used and its important to find they way that works best for your classroom. 

 

The Pros to using this website are that it gets your students moving and active, it  helps them practice balancing, gives students an opportunity to stretch, it improves brain function, it can help with your classroom management and overall it is just fun.  

The Cons to using this website are that you need a steady internet connection while using this website or you will have interruptions and glitches while streaming. It does give students an opportunity to get out of control or be a little silly, so you do need to monitor that. Finally we have so much to teach in a day that finding time to do Go Noodle may also be a challenge. 

Overall I feel if you have a good internet connection and have the time to fit it into your day Go Noodle is a website that students would enjoy and could be used in the classroom.