1. Activity Breaks in
the classroom
Presenter: Scott Williams M.A.
Meriwether Lewis Elementary School,
Charlottesville,Va

2. What are Activity Breaks?
• Activity breaks are short periods of movement to
be utilized by classroom teachers.
• These breaks assist students in staying energized
and focused throughout the school day.

3. How is it relevant?

4. What outcomes should PE
teachers want from these
breaks?
• Kids moving in class
• Fun, short bursts of energy
• TEACHER FRIENDLY! No extra work for
classroom teacher.*
*-Kids know dances/exercises learned in PE. -Fits in with Responsive Classroom methods
-Easy to access files (video and mp3). -Not diruptive; easy to refocus students.
• Choices for kids to pick from, ie; exercise videos
and dance videos

5. Selling this to the teachers
• Present an Activity Break at a faculty meeting as a
demonstration.
• Show to parents and administrators. Get them on
board
• Insert a cool down period to allow kids to refocus
and transition back quickly to what they were
doing
• Install videos for teachers and show how to access
videos

6. • Let the teacher choose the music.
• Provide incentives for the teachers. Ex: teacher
that using them the most in a given time frame,
their class wins an extra PE class that week. (extra
planning period for teacher)

7. Resource
• For exercises, cool down movements, appropriate
but fun upbeat music selections, and examples
check out: mlspe.blogspot.com