Attention

Physically active academic school lessons boost pupils’ activity levels and focus

• Emma Norris at UCL and her colleagues recruited hundreds of pupils aged 8-9 from 10 London schools. Half were allocated randomly to the active lesson intervention. While they were doing those special classes, the other half of the children acted as a comparison and completed typically taught 10-minute maths and English classes.
• Children enrolled in the intervention followed the “virtual traveller” protocol, which involved them performing physical exercises, such as running on the spot, while they travelled the world answering math or English quiz questions pertaining to different countries.
• Virtual travel from country to country was depicted via Google Earth videos and other materials embedded in the teacher’s interactive white board presentation.
• Further physical activity came from the exercises the children performed to signal whether a given math or English quiz answer was true or false – such as jumping jacks for “true” or performing a football kick for “false”.
• Norris and her team had the children wear motion trackers during the classes and also outside of class for two school days per week and two weekend days (these measures were taken at baseline, during the six-week period, and for a few months beyond). Trained observers also monitored the children’s on-task behaviour in class, and the kids completed questionnaires about their engagement levels.
• In some ways, the trial was a win-win: the children in the active intervention were more active (based on more light and moderately vigorous activity) during their “virtual traveller” lessons as compared with the control group kids, and what’s more, they also displayed more on-task behavior, in terms of staying more focused on the lesson, following instructions and making more eye contact with their teacher.