Jumping for joy at teacher Tommy’s bouncing project
Exercise balls replace seats in classroom with happy results
Reinventing the wheel is one thing - but how about reinventing the way a school classroom works?
That is exactly what Ayr Grammar teacher Tommy Taylor intends to do with his unique bouncing classroom idea.
It would involve all the hard seats being removed from a classroom - being replaced by large exercise balls.
He came up with the idea after he was injured in a car accident and his physio recommended using these balls.
The qualified hypnotherapist then thought about how it could help his class and started researching it - finding out that a number of countries around the world use this as standard practice in a number of schools.
Tommy, 37, told the Post: “I am a great believer that primary school is for having fun.
“I don’t think that kids should be sitting down all the time reading books.
“The research I have done shows that it definitely raises attainment of pupils.”
Tommy, who is his second year of teaching at Ayr Grammar, tried it with his P4 class last year after he put it forward to them.
The pupils wanted it too so they held debates and drafted up their ideas to head teacher Gail Gilbert. Tommy said: “Gail was all for it, so I decided to get it all set up.
“It was £ 120 for the full set for a class, and the parent council kindly donated £ 60 - and I footed the bill for the rest. “I then did a three- week analysis on six pupils. “One was high- performing across all areas - and over this analysis their skills uplifted by 10%.
“Even more impressive was a pupil who was ‘ on task’ 4% of the time - but after using these balls it rose to an incredible 52%.
“Annette Coburn who is a lecturer at University of the West of Scotland seems really keen on it and I am meeting with her to discuss it.
“The hope for me is that it becomes standard practice and, who knows, maybe even in everyone’s work office.”