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<\/a><\/p>\nTeacher Jake Dore (CGS\u201911, SED\u201913) takes regular breaks from desk work to get his fourth graders moving at the Kelly School in Chelsea, Mass. Photos by Dan Watkins.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s time for a break. You\u2019ve been reading for a while now, so let\u2019s stand up and shake it out. Really. Try it. Ten reps of each of these: march in place, tap your toes on your chair, hop side to side, sit and stand, and squeeze and release your abs.<\/p>\n All done? It probably took one minute. That minute might be all it takes to boost grades in a classroom. Studies show that when schoolchildren are allowed to stand and move, memory, attention, mood, and academic achievement all improve. \u201cResearch shows that when we exercise, blood pressure and blood flow increase everywhere in the body, including the brain,\u201d neuroscientist Justin Rhodes explained in a 2013\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>\u00a0column. \u201cMore blood means more energy and oxygen, which makes our brain perform better.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet many children\u2014adults, too\u2014spend most of the day sitting down. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans<\/a>\u00a0recommends kids and teens get at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day. But that goal isn\u2019t being met. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, for example, less than 37 percent of high school boys and 18 percent of high school girls meet the guidelines.<\/p>\n Although physical education is mandated in the vast majority of states, a study published in the\u00a0Journal of School Health<\/em>\u00a0in 2007 (the most recent figures available) found that only 3.8 percent of elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools, and 2.1 percent of high schools\u00a0\u201cprovided daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year for students in all grades in the school.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Benes, senior lecturer and coordinator of physical and health education programs at Boston University\u2019s School of Education (SED), says things are getting better, but too slowly. She offers classes to budding teachers on incorporating physical activity into academics, and vice versa. Every year, she hopes her freshmen\u2014just out of school themselves\u2014won\u2019t find her ideas so new. \u201cPeople aren\u2019t trained, in general, to think of movement as part of the school day,\u201d she says. \u201cClearly, what we\u2019re doing here is different, and it\u2019s not the way that students experienced school.\u201d<\/p>\n Benes (SED\u201906, \u201910, SPH\u201916) is taking a two-pronged approach to getting children moving: teaching brain breaks (ways to get the blood flowing during class time) and advocating for more\u2014and more meaningful\u2014physical education classes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to understand why kids get stuck in their chairs for hours at a time: in many districts, there\u2019s less money for physical education.<\/p>\n In his fourth grade inclusion class at the Kelly School<\/a>\u00a0in Chelsea, Mass., Dore (CGS\u201911, SED\u201913) gets his students out of their seats every 90 minutes or so. Although he learned the benefits of movement at SED, Dore says daily activity is part of the school\u2019s culture. The first chance to move comes when he calls a brain break. The class stops for 5 to 10 minutes to let off some steam. \u201cSometimes we do group stretching or shaking it out,\u201d he says. Other times they play games\u2014there\u2019s even the occasional rock-paper-scissors tournament. \u201cAny time a student has the opportunity to reset, take a break, or just shake it out a little bit and get their mind back where it needs to be, I think it benefits everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Studies show that when schoolchildren are allowed to stand and move, memory, attention, mood, and academic achievement all improve.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOur brains can only handle so much input at a time,\u201d says Benes. Some therapists suggest a rough starting point for figuring out a child\u2019s attention span is to use their age: five minutes for a five-year-old, six minutes for a six-year-old. The brain break is a chance to hit the reset button\u2014and increase blood flow.<\/span><\/p>\n Benes teaches a course at SED on the basic principles of physical education. There, she advocates for the breaks, which don\u2019t need to be educational\u2014\u201cjust have them moving, get them sweating\u201d\u2014and also shows how to incorporate movement into lessons to aid \u201cimplicit learning.\u201d That means connecting facts with specific actions: if you\u2019re teaching the Constitution, for instance, have students cross their arms when you get to the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is that if you give your students bodily cues to remember information, it acts like an additional anchor in their brain.\u201d<\/p>\n Benes\u2019 push for brain breaks and implicit learning is largely happening at the elementary level. Still, there\u2019s no reason they wouldn\u2019t work for teens, too. \u201cI use brain breaks with my college students and they love it,\u201d she says, \u201cso you can\u2019t tell me it wouldn\u2019t work in middle school.\u201d In her class, she leads a variety of activities, from jumping jacks to laps of the hallway to passing a balloon.<\/p>\n The biggest barrier to implementation, Benes says, might not be empty coffers, timid administrators, or intransigent legislators, but teachers. In a recent study, Benes found that most classroom teachers know the benefits of movement but aren\u2019t using it in class. She suspects the fear of disruption might be a big factor.<\/p>\n Dore doesn\u2019t allow his brain breaks to disrupt his class. His approach to getting butts back in seats is the same as for any other classroom activity. \u201cThe students need to know what\u2019s about to happen and how it\u2019s going to work; if there aren\u2019t guidelines, expectations, and procedures in place, it\u2019s going to be hard to have a successful time.\u201d The breaks, Dore adds, have just become part of the day\u2014his students even see them as a reward for a morning of hard work.<\/p>\n At Ward Elementary School<\/a>\u00a0in Newton, Mass., Lizzie Pike (SED\u201914) avoids the potential for disruption in her fifth grade classroom altogether by incorporating movement throughout the day, from active morning greetings to switching partners for different class projects.<\/p>\n As great as brain breaks might be, they\u2019re not enough to get a child up to the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity. Benes advocates for regularly scheduled physical education classes, pointing out that children \u201cspend the majority of their life in school\u2014at the ages in which it is critical for students to be moving.\u201d During that time, they surge through physical growth milestones and develop fundamental motor skills\u2014both too important for schools to ignore, she says. Not everyone might see the value in knowing how to throw a ball correctly, for instance, but\u00a0those who learn to exercise properly are more likely to be active adults.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are actually ways you\u2019re supposed to teach people how to move, and there\u2019s a lot to know. It\u2019s a specific skill set,\u201d says Benes, who points to studies showing that kids with sharpened motor skills also have superior communication skills. \u201cIf you\u2019re not good at math in school, you\u2019re less likely to become a mathematician. It\u2019s the same idea [with exercise].\u201d<\/p>\n In 2013, Benes led Boston Public Schools\u2019 effort to overhaul its physical education framework, the city\u2019s guiding curriculum and instruction document. She teaches future physical educators to think more strategically, ditching the \u201csports-based model.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no dodgeball, there\u2019s no picking out the weak kid,\u201d says Tracey Dultz, a physical education teacher at the Hennigan Elementary School<\/a>\u00a0in Boston. Dultz (SED\u201903, \u201910) previously worked for the city, helping schools that had dropped physical education\u2014or never had it\u2014to build new programs. \u201cPhysical education has changed so much,\u201d she says. \u201cThe focus is on individual learning: there\u2019s more daily exercise, teaching students how to exercise indoors without equipment. It\u2019s less team sports.\u201d<\/p>\n Dore says that any time his students have \u201cthe opportunity to reset, take a break, or just shake it out a little bit and get their mind back where it needs to be\u2026it benefits everyone.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Benes also wants her charges to be better advocates for their programs.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re not doing a good enough job of showing administrators why physical education matters,\u201d she says. Educators with \u201cprograms that have been successful are the ones that go to the school committee every year and say, \u2018Here\u2019s what we do.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While brain breaks might just be about sweating, physical education doesn\u2019t have to be. At the Hennigan, Dultz and Benes teamed up for an intervention that incorporated education into exercise. For two weeks, they turned nonfiction texts into races.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would read passages or they would read a sentence and have to do a relay race to pick up a word and put it where it belonged in the sentence,\u201d says Dultz. \u201cWe did a pre- and post-assessment and found that the students learned more about that topic by being able to act it out.\u201d They\u2019ve since formalized the project into a research study, which began in spring 2015.<\/p>\n Having toured many schools that had dropped physical education, Dultz understands the pressures that can lead to movement and activity being sidelined, so she tries to make things easier for her classroom-based colleagues. Every Monday, she sends out an email with ideas from Just-a-Minute, a program that provides schools with ready-made activities for free (visit\u00a0Health-E-tips<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s where we got the exercises at the beginning of this article).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to interrupt your learning,\u201d says Dultz. \u201cIt\u2019s literally just a minute.\u201d You can spare a minute, right? Good. Then before you click away from this page, it\u2019s time to take another break. Everyone up\u2026<\/p>\n Author, Andrew Thurston can be reached at thurston@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nShake It Out<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNo More Dodgeball
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