This week I sparked a new question Why is it important to teach about stretching in the classroom?

What I have found out that it is important to incorporate stretching but also to incorporate movement breaks. Including these breaks into your school classroom can improve the students’ grades, and behaviours. The form of regular activity also stimulates the brain, which in turn will help the students digest the information they are learning. Teachers can use these movements to energize the students before a test, so maybe then they will do move physical movement. Whereas if they wanted to calm and relax the students could perform stretching to really calm the inner nerves.

I also think it would be a fun way to empower the students to make up their own games for movement breaks. Or if you are teaching the primary grades, you could create music Monday’s, touch your toes Tuesday’s, wiggle Wednesday’s, twist and turn Thursday’s, and flexibility Friday’s. These are just some ways that movement and stretching can be incorporated into the classroom.

Resources I used were:

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/elementary-exercises.html

Classroom Physical Activity Breaks

Photo by Eric Ayon on Unsplash