Brain Breaks: Help or Hindrance?

Abstract

Current trends in educational neuroscience indicate that the brain needs frequent downtime for optimal learning. One way of achieving this in the classroom is with brain breaks. Physical movement brain breaks are the most commonly used, but there is less evidence that compares different types of brain breaks and their effectiveness in promoting student refocus after the brain break is complete. This investigation, in one primary classroom, mapped three different types of brain breaks against student enjoyment/engagement, and the time it took students to refocus on their work. Differences were noted in students’ enjoyment levels of the types of brain breaks and the time it took students to refocus on their work following the activity.