Academic Recess

Let’s Play!

Shirley Hales, Eddie Pena, and Cheyenne Ramirez

California State University, Fresno

Academic Recess is a website created using Weebly.com with the intention of improving

students’ academic achievements in an elementary classroom. This website will provide access to

resources for K-6 teachers and their students to use in the classroom for brain breaks after blocks of

academic instruction.

Phase One

​The purpose of Academic Recess is to provide a fun but educational break from traditional

learning activities in order to promote a more productive, attentive focus to engage students in their

learning.

As schools prepare the students of today for college and careers in the future, our students are

being faced with learning rigorous new content and skills of Common Core Standards. These

internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts are designed to prepare students

for the competitive world that we live in (​CCSS Initiative, 2012). ​ These rigorous standards may put

pressure on students and can also add stress which may hinder learning in the classroom.

One problem that our group identified is that students become stressed and overworked in a K-6

classroom. When this happens, students may struggle to retain new information, recall what has

been taught, and student motivation and engagement in learning could possibly decline. Studies

show that short breaks can improve performance and classroom behavior (Howie, Beets, & Pate

2014). It is important to find ways to promote engagement in learning so that our students can be

globally competitive with peers and be college and career ready when they graduate. Scheduling
brain breaks throughout the day could be a solution to increased attentiveness and classroom

engagement.

It’s important to solve this problem of students feeling stress and pressure in a k-6 classroom

because reducing the students' stress and lack of engagement in the classroom will increase their

attentiveness and retention of materials, leading to higher productivity and more learning in the

classroom. When a student is participating in a brain break activity, they get an increase in oxygen

and energy flow to the brain that helps increase cognitive function in the classroom (Lanbrick,

Stoner, Grigg, & Falukner 2016). Research also shows that academic brain breaks increase

attention when they are distributed (Pelligrini 2008). Increased attention could help with retention

of new information and increase academic output. The ultimate impact that we would like to

achieve is improved productivity as it relates to student achievement in the K-6 classroom. We

would like to encourage brain breaks in the K-6 classroom by providing teachers with an accessible

website that is loaded with different types of brain break activities for their students. This project

can help motivate and increase engagement with students in the elementary classroom.

One research resource we found is an article titled “Play Based Learning and Intentional Teaching

in Early Childhood Contexts.” by L. Thomas and E. Warren. Two early childhood educators

underwent the studied trial of incorporating mathematics into a play-based learning curriculum. It

states that teaching mathematics has always been seen as very rigidly taught and had little to no

room for play if it were to be taught properly (Cutter 2013). They talk about how it’s always been

thought that the emphasis should be placed on children memorizing concepts/rules. They draw the

conclusion that play is important for young children in their learning because it gives them a bit of
control in their education, “Most importantly they (the children) have control over their play and

can stop or change or continue whenever they want,” (Thomas, 2011, p. 72). Technology was not an

integral part of the solution, and it does not go into great detail about whether or not it played into

the teaching at all.

Another article we found in our research is titled “Toward a Model for Early Childhood

Environmental Education: Foregrounding, Developing, and Connecting Knowledge Through

Play-Based Learning” by Amy Cutter-Mackenzie and Susan Edwards.​ The problem in this article

that they address both the past and present findings for is the integration of environmental learning

in early childhood education through means of testing play-based learning and pedagogy. In the

early years section of their article, they state that a “knowledge-value-action gap has

emerged...such that knowledge is often treated as the lowest common denominator in the teaching

and learning of environmental education” (Cutter, 2013, p. 195). Some of the problems this article

addresses is that many fear that play-based learning confuses which party is actually in charge of

the learning. Teachers choose and facilitate what standards/lessons are options at any given time

for the student, but there is emphasis placed on the idea that the children decide when to stop,

pause or keep playing, they are supposed to have a say in what they do. It becomes a careful dance

for the teacher to maintain some authority. A solution the article provides is carefully chosen

language, for instance the teacher interviewed in that article states she allows her students to help

decide the activities. She maintains her authority while still granting creative freedom to the

students. Technology again was not explicitly stated as being used to aid in their process.

The intended audience for Academic Recess is educators and students in grades K-6

elementary school classrooms. Students with language barriers, disabilities, and diverse learning
 styles can all benefit from academic brain breaks. Our aim is for elementary classrooms to take

breaks in instruction to enhance learning and help students recall and retain information. These

brain break activities will be geared towards giving students an opportunity for physical,

emotional, and mental breaks between learning. Our main focus will be to encourage teachers to

facilitate brain breaks during and after the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math blocks of

instruction using our website, Academic Recess. Having a website that teachers and students can

access easily throughout the day solves the problem of teachers having to navigate several sites to

find what they need to take such breaks. Teachers are often overworked and putting everything in

one place can lessen their stress and help them as they fit everything into a full day of instruction.

Our project is unique because it will incorporate physical brain breaks as well as mental game

based breaks for children utilizing technology and online educational games. Research suggests

that students may benefit from a variety of brain breaks, though more research in this field would be

beneficial.

​ The contexts and constraints we are facing are how to present the information on our website

and how to incorporate everything we want to include. We want our site to be easy to access and

easy for teachers to use as well as student use in the classroom.

The reason this project is important to our team is because we have all had experiences in the

classroom where we have either experienced or witnessed academic fatigue, lack of engagement,

lack of motivation, and stress in the classroom. The following will give you a glimpse of our

personal experiences as to why this project is important to us.

​Shirley Hales:​ I have been an educator for 24 years and my passion is to help students reach

their full potential. As a lifelong learner, I consider my classroom a place to research, plan, teach,
and reflect on my practice. There never seems to be enough time in the day to meet the needs of a

diverse classroom and there are always many demands on time. Maintaining CSTP can be

challenging, but this project seems to address the standards of engaging all students and maintaining

an effective environment for my diverse students and their unique needs. I know from experience

that students learn best when motivated and engaged. My struggle as a teacher has been finding the

right sites to engage in breaks throughout the day. Having one easy access point will make it easier

for me to plan and implement brain breaks alongside my instruction.

Eduardo Pena:

​Teaching in a k-6 classroom has always been my passion. Being around young minds really

encourages me to help guide students in a direction that will motivate them to become lifelong

learners. The education system will always continue to change and can become stressful for both

teachers and students. I do believe change is good, especially if it’s beneficial for our community to

prosper, but kids need to be kids even in a classroom environment. There are many exciting

strategies we can use to teach our young minds and I hope teachers see how beneficial and fun brain

breaks can be in a classroom. I will always support all students with their learning.

Cheyenne Ramirez:

While I may not have very much experience in a classroom setting, I have a lot of experience in

facilitating the care of young children. I have volunteered numerous times in a T-K/Kindergarten

classroom and have witnessed some great play-based teaching strategies being employed. Growing

up, I went to a school district where even though the numbers weren’t astounding, the scores were

still all that mattered to anyone. It wasn’t particularly rigid, but there was little to no wiggle room as

far as teaching strategies. I felt like I was carrying a large weight to just have to memorize and
constantly have information on the back burner for tests and benchmarks. By the time I entered high

school I had been so overwhelmed and frustrated with what was expected of me, I decided to be

defiant and blaze about the rest of my education. I wanted to become a teacher so that I can

contribute to an education system wherein that was to be prevented from happening to more

children. I want to make sure that when I teach, it's for comprehension, for depth in their

understanding, and I feel that with play-based learning and academic recesses, this can be

achievable.

Our project will be operated in K-6 classrooms after blocks of ELA and Math instruction.

Resources

Amy Cutter-Mackenzie & Susan Edwards (2013) Toward a Model for Early Childhood

Environmental Education: Foregrounding, Developing, and Connecting Knowledge Through

Play-Based Learning, The Journal of Environmental Education, 44:3, 195-213, DOI:

10.1080/00958964.2012.751892

Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012. Common Core State Standards,

http://www.corestandards.org

Howie, Erin Kaye, et al. “Acute Classroom Exercise Breaks Improve on-Task Behavior in 4th

and 5th Grade Students: A Dose–Response.” ​Mental Health and Physical Activity​, vol. 7,

no. 2, 2014, pp. 65–71., doi:10.1016/j.mhpa.2014.05.002.

Lambrick, D., Stoner, L., Grigg, R., & Faulkner, J. (2016). Effects of continuous and intermittent
exercise on executive function in children aged 8-10 years. ​Psychophysiology​, ​53​(9), 1335–1342

Pelligrini, Anthony (2008). The Recess Debate: A Disjuncture between Educational Policy and

Scientific Research. American Journal of Play, Vl n2 p.181-191

Thomas, L., Warren, E., & deVries, E. (2011). Play-based learning and intentional teaching in

early childhood contexts. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(4), 69+. Retrieved

from

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