Although amphetamines would have made the afternoon fly by, I took her “brain breaks” to be more significant than just a trick to get us to buy in based on the good feeling she had going. But there it is: the feeling she created in the room did as much to engage us as anything else. So, whatever you are doing to keep your audience there, whether it be kinesthetic or showing a video midway through your block, how does it contribute to the environment you are setting up for learning?

Personally, I needed to see ways in which I could encourage my audience (in my case teachers and administrators) engaged in the content I am presenting them. What I have been doing just wasn’t getting people to take much away with them. Building in some reflection with the other audience members, especially if they are colleagues or fellow students, helps people chew on the info at least for a little while longer.

You raise an excellent point, Dan, but honestly, I don’t know if I would consider reading a chapter of Doestoevsky a true brain break from writing my Ph.D dissertation, if you understand my parallel here.

I’m remembering those bits of trivia you throw at kids. These obviously are fun/meaningful/relevant. But perhaps these are not the only kind of learning break a kid needs.

My question isn’t, “What does touching something blue have to do with the presentation content?”

My question is, “What does touching something blue have to do with anything?”

However, Kelley King pointed out in her presentation on the brain science of boys that sometimes, a completely blank, context-free “brain break” is necessary to proceed with effective learning (in both boys and girls). And truthfully, we all do and need this. It’s just that we as adults have the privileged status to do it as we see fit. Our kids need permission.

Her management parameters on this were quite clear– tell kids why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it, keep it short (30 sec- 2 min), and if kids abuse it, they sit it out. Even if they choose not to participate (I’m too sexy for this brain break), the very act of standing gives 7% more oxygen to the brain, so it still counts.

I’ve done this vaguely and intermittently in the past, but tried this explicitly in all my classes yesterday and today. Put simply, it works.

Well, sometimes you need amphetemines (think staff meeting or late night graduate courses) …and sometimes a pause where you are moving allows you to think and reflect much better than just sitting in that same uncomfortable seat and ‘taking a moment.’

Obviously you shouldn’t have all 15 breaks be of this type, but I think too often as teachers we just pay lip service to the learning styles/modalities/multiple intelligences concept and only deal with the ones (writing, verbal, math) we feel are “important. Sometimes you need to pace while you think.