Children Need Recess

All children deserve to have unstructured recess time during the school day. During this time, they are letting off steam, practicing social skills, engaging in physical activity and activating their brain. Withholding recess from a student, or simply the threat of missing recess seems to often motivate students to take their work seriously, to complete a learning task, or to make up for missing homework, and it is not uncommon for teachers to use this strategy. Withholding recess from a student can produce desired results for some students some of the time. However, this strategy is not effective with all students, and missing recess is not effective with all students even after this strategy is repeated multiple times with the same student for the same reason!

A negative-based strategy that works some of the time, most of the time, or all of the time, is not necessarily a good strategy just because it works, especially when there are other ways to motivate children to do quality work and to take initiative to be responsible. Unfortunately, it seems that the children who miss recess more often are children who struggle with organization and study skills and/or who find it challenging to conform to classroom expectations. Perhaps these are the children who need recess the most! More importantly, all children need recess to practice skills that are as necessary to learning as math and reading. In fact, physical activity activates the brain and increases academic performance.

Recess is important to children for a multitude of reasons and should be thought of as part of the curriculum rather than unproductive time. Current research on the benefits of recess indicate that there is a positive link between physical activity, on-task behavior and academic achievement in children. More and more children are experiencing problems with obesity and health issues at a younger age due to lack of physical activity. Recess is the one time of the day that children can make decisions about how to use their time. Recess time should be protected and respected. Allowing a child to be able to count on one brief time every day to let off steam and to play, socialize, run, make noise, jump, frolic and be joyful, is a reasonable request. The benefits are immeasurable.

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