Active Play Active Learning Overview of Science and Strategies

hello welcome to the video training for the basics of active learning I'm Kelly and am the project coordinator for the active play active learning project with the Michael and Susan Dell Center for healthy living during this video training we'll go over the concept of active learning and give you brief overview of how playground markings and brain breaks can help promote physically active learning active learning is the incorporation of physical activity into the learning context in order to reinforce or enhance lessons or concepts while also helping students reach physical activity recommendations for the day numerous studies have shown the active kids perform better in school one such study of Texas students found that higher scores on the Fitnessgram test were associated with higher scores on the start test some people also asked why more physical activity during the school day only have so many other competing interests going on well in fact in the past several years there's been growing body of scientific literature that is documented not only into physical health benefits of physical activity but also the cognitive and academic benefits of children engaging more physical activity in fact research has shown that just short bouts of physical activity breaks in the classroom can have meaningful impact on students concentration as well as time on task and now research even documenting positive impacts on standardized testing the more we can incorporate movement into learning contexts the better students are going to learn and in fact they might actually have fun while doing so this slide shows two images of the brain with the color red indicating brain activity the image on the left was taken after children had been quietly sitting for 20 minutes the image on the right was taken after 20 minutes of walking as you can see short bouts of physical activity make up the mind and increase brain activity according to the US Department of Health and Human Services children need at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day this time should be in moderate or vigorous physical activity or activity that causes increases in breathing or heart rate muscle strengthening and bone strengthening exercises it should be included in this time at least three days week currently only 25% of children reached these recommendations think it's really important to get kids up and moving during the school day because naturally being kids they have lot of extra energy even myself have lot of extra energy so if I'm sitting somewhere just for an hour have lots of jitters so know with getting kids up and moving it's gonna help them retain that information that they're learning and get them to refocus the active play active learning project incorporates fun physical activity into the learning process through strategies such as brain breaks playground markings and peer led activities brain breaks or Energizer's are short less than five-minute activities that can be incorporated throughout the day some are related to academic topics while others are just chance to wiggle out all that extra energy and refocus on learning brain breaks are great for the beginning of the day transition between subjects when students are standing in lines or when you as teacher need quick break playground markings do more than just enhance children's activity levels during recess they also provide an outdoor classroom for academic learning both classroom and PE teachers alike can use playground markings to promote active learning examples of playground marking activities can be found in the supplementary materials to this video use these games to teach academic topics during the day by using the different playground markings we have outside such as the US map by using the different colors on there to teach colors and also like to use the alphabets entity to teach variety of different spelling words to my students peer-led games process of active play active learning is the way to teach students leadership skills as well as social and emotional skills while they engage in physically active games peer-led games are structured games intended for short outdoor recess play however they can be adapted to play indoors and even in the classroom brain breaks and playground Marking games are easy to use and can be incorporated into any lesson or subject now that you know the benefits of active learning it's time to learn how to use it in our next training video we'll go over couple of playground marking games and couple of brain breaks that you can use with your class thank you for watching