Effective Teaching Solutions - ETS Nevada

Have you ever wondered if recess time in the schools could be used to better increase your child's academic ability? Is recess really important or just a waste of precious teaching time?

Until the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), most elementary students, parents and teachers took recess for granted in school. Time left over in the school day or instructional period was not questioned if the teacher chose to give students time to work on art projects. With NCLB, the government turned up the heat on schools to achieve testing standards or to face severe penalties for not performing. Students who do not enter the school system with the same set of skills as their peers require more intense and longer instruction in order to meet the testing performance required in today's system. Plus all students are spending more time in the school day mastering requirements in the core subjects. Sometimes in an effort to make sure that students meet these requirements, schools have to cut back on other subjects or school activities. One area that schools are using to create more time in the school day is recess. Does this reduction of time to play have an effect on students? Is play or recess time important or is it expendable?

Play helps us develop many of the skills we need to help us learn to thrive in the world. Besides our parents, play is our first teacher.

During play children develop problem solving skills. For example, a young girl is serving dinner to her 3 stuffed animals but she only has enough food for 2. What should she do? Problem solving skills that start out as simple as this become more difficult the older a child gets.

Play also stimulates a child's creativity to use materials in new ways. Using a box for a car or making a tent from blankets are creative ways to use new materials. How many inventions have been discovered because someone found a new way to use materials?

Playing games allows a child to learn sharing and turn-taking. They also learn how to establish relationships through negotiation and conflict-resolution.

Playing on the playground, or physical play, allows children to develop muscle strength. Gross and fine motor strength and expanding lung capacity are just three ways that physical strength is developed. Having stamina to keep up with learning is extremely important. Physical coordination helps a child with writing and reading skills because they have control over those muscles.

From the moment children are born, they begin to interact with their world. This interaction comes in the form of play. Play develops our thinking skills. With that development, language develops. Play gives children the opportunity to play with language, use and understand language. Without the time to play with objects and people, students become limited in their use of language. This limitation keeps children from entering school on an equal footing with other children their age. Lack of language skills requires intense remediation.

How can parents ensure that children have enough time to play?

Parents can engage children in play activities that involve language such as reading stories, singing songs, and playing rhyming games. Pair words with actions such as "catch the ball" or "throw the ball". Using words to describe daily actions and play activities gives the child a head start on understanding words which teachers will later expect children to know and understand in school. For a child whose first language is not English, parents need to help their child develop skills in their native language first before introducing a second language.

At school, if you find that your child is spending a lot of time without play or recess, talk to the teacher to find out why. Interactions with other children are extremely important especially in the primary grades. Children should have some time to experience unstructured play and develop interactions with their peers.

At home, make sure your child has time to play. Give them some breathing space between school and homework. But children who watch a lot of TV or who play lots of video games do not develop needed play skills. These activities are limited in the vocabulary they expose children to and children do not get the give and take of interacting with others.

Working together, parents and teachers can improve student academic skills while providing adequate time to play and develop needed school skills.