Moving and shaking up classroom time
Increasingly, we are hearing evidence that students should have more opportunities to get up and move during the school day. “Daily physical activity is an opportunity for the average school to become a high-performing school.” So says physician and Lund University doctoral student Jesper Fritz, as quoted by Donna de la Cruz in her New York Times article Why Kids Shouldn’t Sit Still in Class.
While teachers may feel pressure to utilize 100% of class time to teaching the curriculum, it seems that the pros heavily outweigh the cons when it comes to putting aside a few minutes each class for ‘activity breaks’.
‘Activity breaks’ differ from Physical Education (PE) classes, where movement is often taught in a more formal, structured manner. Rather, for short periods of time determined by the teacher, the whole class participates in a series of energizing movements, often while following fun instructional videos.
Just four or five minutes away from their desks could help students to focus better for the rest of the lesson. The ‘mini-workouts’ demonstrated in the videos introduce kids to new sports moves (for example, through BrainErgizers), ‘wake’ up the brain and makes class time more fun and enjoyable. At the end of each week, students have accumulated significant additional time being active.
These mental and physical breaks complement time spent in PE class, as well as the time given at recess to run and play freely. CEO of GoNoodle, Scott McQuigg, says that movement videos aim not to replace PE lessons, but specifically to entertain children while they take a break from classwork. The understanding is that in today’s digital age, children are used to being entertained by technology — so why not make ‘activity breaks’ as entertaining as possible?
With so many good reasons to take a short time out during class, it looks like ‘activity breaks’ are here to stay. The online sites for BrainErgizers, GoNoodle and others are easily accessible to teachers — and perhaps they could be of benefit to students after school as well, for example as constructive breaks while doing homework. Of course, university students and desk workers could benefit equally from taking breaks that include movement — after all, it is human nature for people to move.
