New Data on the Brain

Today we had a district training that involved breakout sessions, I went to one on the new research on the brain and was floored by the findings. Basically the findings say that physical activity, while good for the body, is even better for the brain. In one study students were taught for a half hour and then half the class went outside for structured and unstructured physical activity for fifteen minutes. The other half stayed in the room and reviewed the material from the first half hour. So logically the group that stayed in and reviewed the material tested better than those that got to play right? Wrong. Those that ran and played did better than those with the extra practice. This study was reproduced three times with the same results.

In another study underachieving students were placed in a zero hour gym class. They were to be physically active before class started. The result was their grades went up immensely. In fact Dr. Ratey would say that one should exercise just for the brain alone, the body enhancement is just gravy. Kind of different than most thoughts.

Thought this was interesting and enlightening. We may be playing tag in the class more often now. And that would be apparently be more beneficial than anything else I could do.