My first class of students in Little Rock were taught directly after school. We gave them 20 to 30 minutes of recess before starting.
One cold winter day that had rained all day long, the children had recess indoor all day long. Since the school has no gym and various regulations prohibit teachers from dropping any instructional time to use the cafeteria for a bit of indoor recess on such days, they sat in the classroom or cafeteria all day long, no outdoor recess.
We made them go outside for 5 minutes to run off a bit of steam, it had stopped raining by the afternoon. But, they all got cold and came back inside.
They learned absolutely nothing that day, they could not pay attention. I switched to games 30 minutes earlier than normal, and that helped a bit but they still did not learn much of anything.
The girls would have been able to learn a bit if the boys had not been so wound up, I think.
It is really crazy, the regulations that do not let teachers control their schedule. Better 30 minutes of exercise and 20 minutes of math that actually gets to the brain than 50 minutes of math with none of it getting to the brain!
Pure correlation study. No causation can be implied.
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ReplyDelete~Luke
This reminds me of the day without recess...
ReplyDeleteMy first class of students in Little Rock were taught directly after school. We gave them 20 to 30 minutes of recess before starting.
One cold winter day that had rained all day long, the children had recess indoor all day long. Since the school has no gym and various regulations prohibit teachers from dropping any instructional time to use the cafeteria for a bit of indoor recess on such days, they sat in the classroom or cafeteria all day long, no outdoor recess.
We made them go outside for 5 minutes to run off a bit of steam, it had stopped raining by the afternoon. But, they all got cold and came back inside.
They learned absolutely nothing that day, they could not pay attention. I switched to games 30 minutes earlier than
normal, and that helped a bit but they still did not learn much of anything.
The girls would have been able to learn a bit if the boys had not been so wound up, I think.
It is really crazy, the regulations that do not let teachers control their schedule. Better 30 minutes of exercise and 20 minutes of math that actually gets to the brain than 50 minutes of math with none of it getting to the brain!