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Questions and Answers - July 29, 2008 Webinar

Q: Is there a "magic" amount of recess time that gives children the benefits of the break while allowing them to easily return to their classwork? Would several short breaks be more or less effective?

 

In terms of physical activity, the National Association for Sport & Physical Education (www.naspeinfo.org) advises several “bouts” lasting 15 minutes or more each day, consisting of more activity than inactivity. “For example, in a 15-minute recess, a child might accumulate 10 minutes of activity I several activity bursts of several minutes and accumulate 5 minutes of rest in several inactive periods of several seconds to several minutes in length.” Children should accumulate at least 60 minutes, and up to several hours, of age-appropriate physical activity on all or most days of the week.

 

Additionally, when it comes to creative play, children need extended periods of time to delve into and complete “projects.”

 

I’d love to see children having two 30-minute recess periods and several “movement breaks” in the classroom throughout the day.

 

Q: Our elementary school is moving toward structured recess where certain games will be taught and played. They will not be allowed to play pcik up games of soccer, football, kickball because they tend to result in conflict. What are your thoughts on this?

 

Recess should be a time for unstructured play and free choice. That’s its primary purpose. With regard to conflict, as a colleague of mine has said, if children were having difficulty reading we wouldn’t take all the books away from them. By the same token, children will never learn conflict resolution if we don’t give them opportunities to practice it!

 

That said, if structured recess is going to happen, it’s my hope that the children will still have choices to make. That is, they’ll have several different types of games from which to choose.

 

Q: How can we influence school districts, or single schools, to follow the theory that not just grammar, mathematics, etc. develop children's brains? We have schools that have eliminated the time previously allotted to PE and other extra curricular activities to concentrate on core subjects instead.

 

This has become part of my life’s work! I’m often frustrated by all of the wonderful research we have of which policy makers are unaware or choose to ignore! Perhaps the only thing we can do is to bring the research to their attention.

 

You can find information pertaining to the importance of recess in particular and physical activity in general at the websites of the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play (www.ipausa.org), Rescuing Recess (www.rescuingrecess.com), and NASPE (www.naspeinfo.org), among others.

 

 Q: Do you know of any cities that have provided ordinances that allowed limited automobile access to schools (employees and administrators and school busses, no parents not on school business and no dropping off children, to advocate riding or walking to school? Too many drive their children to school either for efficiency reasons (although they complain of the long drop-off line) or safety reasons.

 

I don’t know of any and would be surprised to learn that they exist! It’d make too much sense.

 

Q: Could you please describe cross crawling again?

 

It’s just a matter of standing and slowly alternating opposite elbow to knee. So, you’d lift your left knee and bring your right elbow to meet it, and vice versa. In the process, your elbows would be crossing the body’s midline.

 

Q: can you restate the percentage of schools who have recess, or the lack there of it?

 

The American Association for the Child’s Right to Play estimates that 40% of elementary schools have eliminated recess.

 

Q: Did the school change their no recess policy after that study?

 

I’ve posed the question to Olga Jarrett, who conducted the study, but have yet to get a response. Will keep you posted!

 

Q: I like the idea of integrating physical activity into the at-school day, especially (Finland-style) into each school *hour*. But I wonder whether most U.S. teachers are equipped to do this. Has the U.S. "compartmentalized' phys-ed as "another class" taught by a specialist? In general, are U.S. classroom teachers physically active enough in their own lives to lead physical activities?

 

At the moment, physical education is not one of the content areas covered by No Child Left Behind. That means it’s not required to be taught by a trained specialist, which is certainly in the best interest of the students! I do think that with a bit of research, classroom teachers, who may or may not be physically active in their own lives, are capable of leading meaningful movement breaks. Typically these don’t require a level of vigorous activity that would be beyond their capability.

 

Q: In addition to having more time to play at recess, it would seem children would benefit from having more time to eat a good, healthy lunch at a relaxed pace, making eating lunch a social occcasion as well as feeding the body. The result could be a longer school day with a longer noon break for recess and lunch. While I know the French would agree, is there any trend in the US in this direction and/or advocacy group taking up the issue?

 

Not that I’ve seen. There has been a push by recess advocates, however, to ensure kids have recess before lunch. This has been shown to improve children’s eating habits and their behavior upon return to the classroom.

 

 

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