Could Four Breaks A Day Help Children Work, Rest And Play?
A school in the US has begun to experiment with the amount of time given over to recess during the school day – with apparently impressive results. Kindergarten pupils (5 to 6-year-olds) and first-graders (6 to 8-year-olds) at Eagle Mountain Elementary in Fort Worth, Texas currently receive two 15-minute breaks in the morning and a […]
A school in the US has begun to experiment with the amount of time given over to recess during the school day – with apparently impressive results.
Kindergarten pupils (5 to 6-year-olds) and first-graders (6 to 8-year-olds) at Eagle Mountain Elementary in Fort Worth, Texas currently receive two 15-minute breaks in the morning and a further two 15-minute breaks in the afternoon – triple the total amount of break time they received under the school’s old system.
Speaking to the US news outlet TODAY Parents, one of the school’s first-grade teachers, Donna McBride remarked that ‘There was a part of me that was very nervous about it…I was trying to wrap my head around my class going outside four times a day and still being able to teach those children all the things they needed to learn.’
Yet five months on from the new system coming into effect, McBride conceded that her pupils appeared less restless and more focused, better behaved and more attentive than was the case previously. The change also seems to have had an impact on the pupils’ home life, with some parents noticing their children becoming more sociable and independent.
15-minute reboots
The change was prompted by Eagle Mountain Elementary’s participation in The LiiNK Project – a US schools programme that seeks to reconfigure school days so that they include more time for rest and physical activity, and also calls on schools to make less use of standardised testing.
The thinking behind The Liink Project is in turn informed by what its creator, Debbie Rhea experienced when visiting schools in Finland – particularly the preference in Finnish schools for giving pupils short but frequent breaks throughout the day. The TODAY Parents piece quotes her as saying, “You start putting 15 minutes of what I call reboot into these kids every so often…and it gives the platform for them to be able to function at their best level.”
The report makes no mention of dedicated lunchtimes, however, before or after the change. KS1 timetables for UK primaries typically include a 15-minute mid morning break and up to an hour set aside for lunch, often amounting to slightly more than their US counterparts, but who knows – could the practice of holding shorter breaks more often throughout the day eventually catch on over here?
