The quality of the recess influences the school grades of the students
Every person moves through different environments in their day to day. Different environments that influence in different ways. In the case of the youngest children, they go through several scenarios that span from their room, through the school, to the enclosures where they carry out extracurricular activities.
Within the school it is necessary to emphasize that the children spend time both inside the classrooms and outside of them in the playtime. And, although not usually spend an hour in this environment, the school playground environment influences the smallest and even affects their grades as shown by a new study by the University of Oregon.
Children need recreation
William Massey, lead author of this research, points out that although the importance of playtime Throughout the years, we should not reduce the discourse to the need to have it or not. We must highlight the influence of this environment and that the organization of it can have great benefits or on the contrary give rise to negative consequences in the small ones.
To analyze the effects of these areas on the youngest, the researchers analyzed 649 outdoor recreations distributed along the 495 schools. In all of them, they appreciated that these school zones were useful for the little ones to develop different activities, from the empowerment of social skills to physical exercises through sports practices.
However, the researchers also found that during the 20 minutes Recess is possible to happen altercations like fights between students. When these events happened, the mood of the youngest was less and therefore showed a lower willingness to attend in class, which eventually reverberated in their school grades.
This is where the recreation equipment comes into play. Those schools that had professionals for mediate among the students and involved in these fights, they had better results at the academic level. We must also highlight the importance of this time in the school playground as a time to disconnect after so many hours of class.
The schools that presented the best facilities and that therefore they allowed a mental evasion, they obtained that after this rest the students presented / displayed a greater attention during the following school hours. The researchers now indicate that the next step is to expand the sample to continue gathering data on this influence to be able to use it in favor of academic performance.
The equipment of the recreation
This is not the first study that highlights the importance of recreation as an environment that influences children. From the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Benefits that has a green patio for the little ones in the house. This American organization has made this report based on data provided by different schools.
This information dealt with the type of school playground and the state of the students: cardiac health, level of stress, obesity, presence or not of deficiencies in the attention. Those school breaks that had elements like green areas with vegetation, orchards or that bet for classes in the open air counted on children with a level of stress less than the average. At the same time, these centers had a reduced level of obese children and a higher level of attention by the students who attended these centers.
The researchers point out that, for example, the fact of seeing a green space is in itself a less stressful element than seeing long sports tracks of cement. "Many children lack quality school areas, and in many neighborhoods, the standard space where they play is a sterile asphalt park or a piece of concrete fenced with a metal fence, a completely unsuitable environment for children to play," explains the doctor. Stephen Pont, one of the authors of this study.
Damián Montero
