Living Well, Learning Well

There are a variety of strategies that can promote a positive learning environment and sometimes its about recognising that a 'pause' in learning might be necessary to reset and regain focus.

What are brain breaks?

Brain breaks are a great way to increase young people’s physical activity time and reduce time spent being sedentary. We know that Australia’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines recommend that children aged between 5–17 years should spend 60 minutes a day doing some form of physical activity, and that they should limit sedentary recreational screen time to no more than 2 hours per day.

Brain breaks are also a fantastic way to increase focus, memory, and brain efficiency. Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, which wakes it up.

All of the activities in this section are designed to go for no more than 5 minutes. You can incorporate these into your Resilience Project lessons or into other classes as well. It is good to do them after some intense learning.

Try this one at home:

Toe Tapping

• Stand up and face your partner.
• Both you and your partner put out your right leg and tap your right feet together once and say “1” out loud.
• Tap your left foot together 3 times and say “3”!
• Tap your right foot together 2 times and say “2”!
• Continue the 1,3,2 toe-tapping pattern, alternating feet.
• See how fast you can go.