Author: Nelly Cardenas Tapia
Major: Elementary Education
Approved: Fall 2020
Status: In progress
Recognizing the importance of physical activity, administrators of elementary schools seek to provide an increased number of opportunities for students to obtain physical activity during the school day. Teachers have also begun to incorporate movement into their lesson plans. The purpose of this project is to study the effect of short sessions of physical activity in the classroom, led by a ten-minute video, on student behavior and attentiveness in the classroom. After a literary review, six local 2nd and 3rd grade teachers will be recruited to participate in the study. A baseline survey will be administered to participating teachers regarding student behavior and attentiveness after the first two weeks of school. Then, video-led active breaks will be administered in three of the six participating classrooms by the teacher. The other three teachers will not play the video during the first nine weeks. At the end of each week, all participating teachers will complete a survey. At the end of the first nine weeks, teachers will complete another survey about their overall perspectives of their students’ attentiveness and behavior. Then, conditions will be flipped in the second nine weeks. Finally, at the end of the second nine weeks, all teachers will complete an end of the project survey that asks about their experience with the intervention and whether they would consider incorporating active breaks in their future classrooms. For participating in the study and playing a key role in the collection of data, teachers will receive a monetary incentive and recertification points, as authorized by their school administrator.
