Humans in general have short attention spans, but today's students have a particularly hard time staying focused. Dr. Judy Willis, MD, (2016) a neurologist and classroom teacher (how cool is that, by the way?!) emphasizes the need for a break: "Brain breaks should take place before fatigue, boredom, distraction, and inattention set in....As a general rule, concentrated study of 10 to 15 minutes for elementary school and 20 to 30 minutes for middle and high school students calls for a three- to five-minute break." So asking students to stay completely focused for long chunks of time without a break might be too much for them to handle. GoNoodle is an easy way to implement brain breaks in your classroom. It has been around for a long time, and is marketed more for elementary students, but there are so many videos on their site that work for middle school and even high school students. GoNoodle has different activities of varying lengths. They have activities that you can use at the start of the day (good for those who have first hour classes that don't seem quite awake), and they have ones you can use in the middle of class to give students a brain break. Now, of course, I would advocate for the teacher and all students to participate. Having said that, I know not everyone is comfortable making a complete fool of themselves (both teachers and students included). Luckily, there are activities that range from the cheesy to the not-so-cheesy and from the complicated to the easy-peasy. You really can tailor it to meet the needs of your students, which is great. An alternative to GoNoodle is just going to YouTube and searching for brain breaks, but the GoNoodle site is nice because you easily can find videos by categories (i.e. Cross Lateral Skills, Enhance Focus, or Brainercise) and it keeps track of your progress. GoNoodle does have a YouTube Channel that is really well organized, too. Overall, the key here is to make sure we are giving students time to focus and re-energize, even if it's just for a minute or two! Any other ideas for how to give students' brains a break? Comment below! Professional Standards
Standard 2: Impact on Student Learning Standard 4: Grow and Develop Professionally
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