Developing Body Language: Posture
 

The aim of this work is to enable the children to develop an awareness of the different kinds of posture and what you can tell from someone’s posture. Posture usually alters along the tense – relaxed dimension and so it can be helpful to introduce this concept of a ‘sliding scale’ quite early on in the sessions.

I will explain how I might do this through one of the activities. With young children, work on posture might be limited to ‘good sitting’ for example, and what that means. With older children, you will be able to be more detailed and look at sitting, standing, open and closed postures, head and arm positions etc.

Here are a few activities that you can do to help develop this awareness:

1. Walk This Way!

I often start by doing an activity that involves walking around the room in different ways called ‘Walk this way!’ (Talkabout for Teenagers, 2009) The children are instructed to walk around the room and alter their posture as instructed.

• Instruction 1: Try to make yourself as big as possible and take up as much space as possible. Raise your head up, open up your arms, stand tall, straighten back, shoulders down and back.

Stop. Look around and see what other children look like.  Tell me how you feel.

• Instruction 2: Try to make yourself small.  Hunch your shoulders and bring your head down.  Close or cross your arms and slouch forward.  Bend your knees slightly.

Stop. Look around and see what the other children look like.  Tell me how you feel.

• Instruction 3: Imagine that you are feeling really tense.  You might be nervous or worried or angry. Walk around the room.

Stop. Look around and see what the other children look like.  What has happened to our bodies and our posture?

• Instruction 4: Imagine that you are relaxed and happy.  Walk around the room and go up to someone and say hello.

Stop. Look around and see what the other children look like.  What has happened to our bodies and our posture?

This activity works best in a room with mirrors (for example a drama studio) or using video to record and playback the activity.

2. What is My Body Saying?

You can use drawings or pictures of people to look at different postures.  For example these drawings are from Talkabout for Teenagers (due 2009):

Questions you might ask the children are:

• How do you think this man is feeling?
• How can you tell?
• What do you notice about his body / hands / head etc?

3. What Do I Look Like?

Taking photographs of the children sitting and standing in different ways may motivate them to look at how posture can affect the way they look. 

I would encourage them to make up a poster or picture with all the different photos on and for them to put a few comments next to each picture, for example: ‘this is me looking confident’.

4. Posing Postures

Group leaders prepare a number of different cards on which different emotions are either written and/or symbolised.  For example, these pictures are taken from an activity in Talkabout for Teenagers:

The children are then asked to work in pairs and given a card.  They are given a few minutes to prepare a statue that reflects that emotion using their posture and facial expression. 

One pair ‘performs’ their statue and the other children try to guess the emotion (Talkabout Activities, 2003).

5. The Posture Thermometer

The children are introduced to the thermometer which shows 5 numbers. A number 5 represents very tense and 1 represents very relaxed.

Drawings or pictures can be used to help if necessary. The group leader calls out a number and the children have to adopt that posture.

You can make it more interesting by adding instructions such as ‘pretend to clean your teeth in a number 5’! Children are asked to think about what they had to do to make themselves appear more tense for example.

(Talkabout Activities, 2003)

6. The Subtlety of It All

For older children, it is always good to get into the subtlety of posture (see Talkabout for Teenagers, due 2009). For example learning that:

Leaning inwards will show that you are listening to someone…

Putting your head slightly to one side will also show them that you are listening…

Nodding your head will show them that you are interested and will encourage them to carry on talking to you…

Slouching will also make you look bored, so it’s best to sit in a more upright way…

So hopefully that has given you a few ideas on how you could tackle teaching children all about posture.

In the next issue, I will think about the way we talk, that is, introducing children to intonation, clarity, volume, rate and fluency.

Alex Kelly
Speech & language therapist and social skills consultant www.alexkelly.biz

Alex Kelly is the author of Speechmark's best selling Talkabout series.