Background
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines recess as “regularly scheduled periods within the elementary school day for unstructured physical activity and play.” Research documents the benefits of recess for a child’s cognitive, emotional, physical, and social well-being. Yet, recent surveys and studies have indicated a national trend toward reducing recess to accommodate additional time for academic subjects in addition to its withdrawal for punitive or behavioral reasons.
Just as physical education and physical fitness have well-recognized benefits for personal and academic performance, recess offers its own, unique benefits. Recess represents an essential, planned respite from rigorous cognitive tasks. It affords a time to rest, play, imagine, think, move, and socialize. After recess, for children, students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively. In addition, recess helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not acquired in the more structured classroom environment.
Although not all children play vigorously at recess, it does provide the opportunity for children to be active in the mode of their choosing and to practice movement and motor skills. Importantly, recess affords young children free activity for the sheer joy of it. Even minor movement during recess counterbalances sedentary time at school and at home and helps the child achieve the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day, a standard strongly supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy, which can help lower risk of obesity. To maximize the benefits of recess, the AAP recommends 20 minutes of daily recess for children in Kindergarten through 5th grade.
In general, recess has been fading from Florida’s public schools for the past decade, as educators looked to squeeze more academic time into the school day, often because of state rules. In a January 2015 poll of Orange County Public Schools’ (OCPS) 123 elementary schools, 100 (81%) of elementary schools offer some form of recess (all Winter Park Health Foundation (WPHF) consortium elementary schools offer recess). This concerns some parents and as a result, parents are leading the efforts to incorporate 20 minutes of daily recess into all OCPS schools. Their activities brought before the OCPS School Board include:
October 2014: Petition for 20 minutes of daily recess for all K-5 OCPS students with 300+ signatures presented to Orange County School Board.
January 2015: 50+ parents and students join together at School Board meeting to request district wide policy. OCPS School Board asked Area Superintendents to follow-up with all elementary school principals to work recess physical activity into their schedules starting fall 2015.
June 2015: Recess resolution passed by School Board (Click here for resolution)
“Encourages elementary schools to allow for approximately 20 minutes of recess time at least on days when students are not scheduled for physical education; allowing teachers to utilize their discretion in scheduling recess based upon the needs of their students, and their expertise.”
In July 2015, WPHF discussed recess with consortium school principals during a scheduled consortium principals’ meeting. The following challenges were indicated in regards to meeting the recess resolution suggestion of 20 minutes of daily recess:
- Space
- Equipment
- Scheduling
- Weather
- Conflict Resolution
Principals indicated recess equipment as their top request to address these challenges.
Solution
In order to address the concerns of the consortium elementary principals while maximizing recess time, the WPHF’s Children and Youth Work Group has approved a grant of up to $38,000 to provide recess carts with non-elimination equipment to all WPHF consortium elementary schools. Recess carts are a best practice for the Florida Department of Education’s Office (FL DOE) of Healthy Schools and have been successfully piloted in Audubon Park and Dommerich Elementary schools with Fuel Up to Play 60 funding. Providing recess carts to classroom teachers does the following:
- Maximizes recess time by eliminating the need for classroom teachers to locate equipment
- Increases student participation by promoting non-elimination games and activities
- Increases the life of the equipment through classroom ownership
- Decreases scheduling, overcrowding, and weather related concerns by allowing for use of non-traditional space for recess
- Decreases recess conflict by offering numerous activities and non-elimination games
- Allows for customization and personalization for class needs based on variety of equipment and resources provided.
The recess carts will be supplied with equipment based on the results of the FL DOE’s recess kit pilot through the YMCA’s Partnership for Healthier Communities. Wagons will be provided to house the equipment for easy transportation of the items throughout the elementary school campuses. In order to reach all 270 consortium elementary classrooms in a cost-effective method, 54 recess carts will be purchased with each recess cart serving four to six classrooms. Recess carts will also be specific to lower elementary grades (K-2) and upper elementary grades (3-5).
Consortium Healthy School Team Leaders will be provided training on the equipment in the recess carts and asked to then train their staff during an all-staff meeting on the effective use of the carts. Each cart will also contain a binder, with suggested non-elimination games and additional methods to utilize the cart’s equipment.
Technical assistance will be available throughout the year to help teachers with any questions they may have as they utilize their school’s recess carts. In May of 2016, teachers will be asked to complete a short survey to provide feedback and data regarding the benefits and lessons learned in regards to the utilization of the recess carts.
Recess Cart Objectives:
- Increase opportunities for students to get physical activity without sacrificing instructional time.
- Provide teachers with a tool to maximize recess time while minimizing conflict
- Help schools meet the OCPS resolution suggestion of 20 minutes of daily recess
- Decrease scheduling concerns by allowing for the utilization of unconventional recess space for recess (classroom, media center, hallways, etc.)
- Improve children’s performance in the classroom and on standardized end-of-grade tests.
- Increase classroom teacher knowledge of and participation in non-elimination games
Recess carts will be delivered to WPHF consortium elementary schools this fall. Make sure to ask your child about the recess carts at their school!