Benefits Of School Recess

If you are going to ask a child what his or her favorite part of school is you might get a few answers like math or science but you will get a lot of lunch, gym and recess. As most people would agree with this, people like the free moving times that are fun over those that you have to work hard. In schools you cannot take away lunch it is a basic human right, gym is limited but again can’t really be taken away because it teaches so much. But on the other hand recess is not indispensable. Many school are questioning if they should keep it or if they could use that valuable time for more important things. Also many times it is not easy to round up enough help for the students to have a properly supervised and safe time outside. Students get great …show more content…
This type of exploratory experience is a feature of play in an unstructured social environment.”(AAP News) Research has shown that recess creates more attentive students. Think about it students spend most of lunch and recess socializing and getting out a lot of built up energy. When they enter the classroom after they are much more calm and have all there socializing out of them. You see grades on test are higher when the test is taken after lunch vs. being before lunch. This is because at the adolescent ages students brains cannot stay completely focused on one task for too long, some experts say that magic number is an hour others say it increases with age but starts off at 30mins. After this time students should have a break or a different stimulus to rest the brain. Although specified time afforded for recess diminishes with age, the benefits of periodic breaks in the academic day to optimize cognitive processing applies equally to adolescents and to younger …show more content…
The real question is why does recess stop, yet you are getting a little old to be playing on the playground but don’t you need a break. Many schools have time built into the day to give kids break they are homeroom time or advisory is what we called it. But this is just another period where work is thrown on you. Many high schools use it as a test prep for the ACT or SAT, instead of letting their students use it to recuperate their brain or catch up on homework. Students in high school in my mind need more of a mental break more than elementary students. Could a mental break at the high school level produce better test scores? That’s research to be done by someone else. But to the people that are trying to take away recess in schools because of ridiculous reasons, look at the facts, see what happens when children don’t have recess. You will turn students into robots that don’t do well in school. Along with this I want you to think about how your childhood would be without