Active Indoor Recess
Are your students restless from being cooped up inside due to rain or cold? Active indoor recess is a great way to get physically moving, regardless of space or equipment constraints.
Read MoreRecess plays a key role in a child’s academic success, including their physical, social, and emotional well-being. Recess provides students with time to be active to develop healthy bodies, enjoy moving more, and accumulate the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity per day. Recess is also a time for children to release energy and reduce stress, which improves attention and reduces disruptive behavior in the classroom.
Elementary schools should incorporate a minimum of 20 minutes per day of recess for all grades and 30 minutes for primary grades. The benefits of recess also extend to secondary grades, too! Even if it’s just for 15 minutes, older students also benefit from regular physical activity breaks.
Try these simple tips to incorporate active recess at your school:
Activities such as these help students explore…
Social Awareness: outdoor recess provides free time that allows children to use their imaginations and engage in meaningful ways with friends through unstructured play. Unstructured play helps students develop empathy and see different perspectives for others’ ideas. Students may have unique ideas for how to play with a jump rope or a soccer ball and learning to be open to ideas different than their own is an important skill in social awareness.
Relationship Skills: Incorporating active outdoor recess into the school day benefits children socially by allowing them to explore who they are in context of their peers with minimal adult guidance. Children develop skills in communication, conflict resolution and teamwork through games and activities while also learning how to respect the needs of their peers.
Advocate for recess as a necessary educational support and remind staff to never use it as a consequence.
Create simple rules to provide safe play and share the rules with students and staff.
Regularly check play areas for safety hazards (broken equipment, holes, glass, nails or other objects that could cause injuries).
Schedule recess before lunch!
Be sure all recess activities are inclusive. Options should include activities that require varied levels of skill, non-competitive and more competitive activities, and team and individual options with options that require little equipment.
Implement games that have minimal wait time so students are active for as long as possible.
Have students pledge to be active during recess. Have students’ use a physical activity tracker to monitor their active times throughout the day, and provide healthy rewards for being physically active, etc.
Ensure active recess allows for student choice and encourage physical activity for all students, regardless of skill or ability.
Consider moving game and sport activities away from the playground sets.
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