Experiences this week...

Hello!

As our team has mentioned in earlier posts, we are excited to study and research the use of "brain breaks" in the elementary classroom.  One of the key components of the brain break is to have some sort of physical movement.  First, we wanted to share some of our personal experiences with brain breaks in school this week (and please share your personal experiences with our team as well).  In one of our classrooms, the teacher played "Happy" by: Pharrell Williams and the students were allowed to sing and dance around the classroom for the entirety of the song.  The children absolutely loved the freedom to move around the classroom and sing/dance to a popular song!  Both my mentor teacher and I danced and sang with the students.  Katie Brown's teacher incorporates PBIS (positive behavior intervention and supports) into their brain break routine.  Each table (set of 4-5 student desks) gets points for good, on-task behavior. Whichever team receives the most points at the end of the day gets to pick a brain break of their choice-they are allowed to pick from a short exercise video or choose from exercise cards.  **Does anyone have any thoughts on brain breaks being at the END of the day?  This brings up an interesting question: if the goal of brain breaks is to keep children engaged and relieve a lot of the tensions/stresses from sitting for too long, is it effective to have a break at the end of the day?  One of the ways we will investigate during this research project is trying to identify "which" brain breaks seem to be most effective, and "when" is an optimal time to incorporate them.  Stay tuned for our upcoming posts.  We are interested in interviewing a fellow classmate about her experiences as a yoga instructor, and specifically her work with children's yoga!

Unfortunately, this event just passed, but this would have been a great conference to attend to learn more about children's yoga and it's use in the classroom!
http://conference.yokid.org/