Rebecca London, a researcher and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz London, recently described to Education Week how recess can elevate the school experience and teach skills useful after playgrounds have been left behind.
More than half of states don’t require schools to include recess. What are your thoughts on that?
I don’t think even close to half of all states have any kind of [recess] requirement. And most of those states require 20 minutes of recess out of the whole school day. That’s not that much time. These are small children, and play is how they learn.
What is missing from conversations about recess?
There’s no mechanism for supporting the training of adults in how to create and maintain and engage students in healthy play. You can’t just throw 400 kids out on a play yard for 20 minutes with a couple of balls and expect it to go well.
What do you see as the baseline role of recess?
It allows students a break from the school day. For some kids, their needs are to run. But for other kids, their needs are to have some quiet time, to be able to play a game, or to pick bugs out of the grass—to do something that’s a little bit less intense than school work, because that’s how they reset.
I think there needs to be local control and decision-making, ideally involving the young people themselves to create the space that’s going to engage them the most.
How does recess look different on various school playgrounds?
The primary distinction is between structured and unstructured recess. Structured recess, in the literature, looks like a gym class. There’s an adult who is saying, “Today we’re playing soccer, today we’re playing basketball.”
An unstructured recess would go something like this: “We’ve got ‘found objects’ on our recess yard. There are tires, there are pieces of wood, there are big blocks of whatever, and you’re on your own kids, figure it out.” Australia is really big on that approach.
What do you recommend recess to look like?
What I’ve adopted in my own work is facilitated recess. It’s not structured. There’s free choice. There’s lots of opportunities. There are different games and specific zones that kids can play in. Everybody knows what’s out there for the offering. There’s appropriate equipment. You can go from one game to the other. You don’t have to pick one for the day; you can hop around.
Or you could do nothing. There are safe places where kids can sit and talk. Some schools have a “walk and talk” track, where students can just walk and talk if they want. That’s an especially good strategy for middle schoolers. Sometimes the counselors or the assistant principal will also walk the track, and then they can be available to interact with students if they’re open to that.
Adults can help with scaffolding, helping to create healthy patterns in terms of things like social engagement with other students and conflict resolution. For instance, if you lose a game, you don’t have to break down or storm off, but rather just accept that you’ve lost and keep going.
Where can schools get guidance on recess best practices?
That type of guidance is coming from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is about to release a new statement in support of recess. The Global Recess Alliance, of which I’m a founding member, is also about to release a statement in support of healthy recess.
What time of day do you recommend for recess?
By the middle of the day, kids want to get out and see their friends. And I think that’s fine. From the nutrition perspective, it’s play first, then eat, because the kids would then be more likely to actually eat their food.
What about morning recess?
For those whose kids come to school well-fed, or they have a snack program or a breakfast program, that’s great. The science really does show that when children engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity, it can improve their ability to concentrate and their ability to sit still and to learn. But morning recess might not work if you have a population of students who are hungry. So it depends on the school context.
What do you consider the ideal number of recesses per day?
We at Global Recess Alliance advocate for more than one recess a day. We think kids need a couple of different breaks: minimum of two, three is better—one in the morning, one at lunch, one in the afternoon.
They don’t all have to be half-hour breaks each time, but just a brief opportunity for students to reset.
Education Week
