Did You Know That Exercise Boosts Kids’ Academic Functioning? Part 2: Kids

Now that scientific research studies indicate that specific types of exercise affect specific parts of the brain – focusing, memory, executive functioning skills – it’s time to rethink mandatory PE in our K-12 curriculum. I just blogged about the amazing benefits aerobics and weight training have for adults. Kids should exercise for at least 20 minutes each school day to improve their learning capabilities and memories.

I recommend that my high school students do hardcore aerobics for 20-30 minutes before taking the SATs or ACTs. Besides waking them up, exercising gets their blood flowing throughout their teenage bodies and THEIR BRAINS, which according to recent studies shows immediate improvement in attention, executive functioning, and achievement in math and reading tests.

Charles Hillman at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recommends that schools consider organizing their bell schedules for students around the students’ need to have at least one hour of exercise per day.  He says that it’s best to spread that hour over the course of the school day to help keep students focused and to promote learning because the long-term effect of aerobic exercise has yet to be determined. 

While you might think that if aerobics is good for attention in the short term, then practicing skills for a sport would should be incorporated in the plan, research shows that this is not true.  When kids practice specific sports skills just before taking a test that requires sustained focus, these kinds of exercise actually reduce the students’ ability to focus on the test. Oops!

But don’t pull your child off her favorite team just yet.  Maria Chiara Gallota at the Univ. of Rome found that doing coordinative exercises 2 times per week over 5 months really does improve their ability to concentrate and ignore distractions.  So what does this mean? You don’t want them to do intense training before a test.

Hillman suggests that students who exercise regularly have a larger hippocampus and basal ganglia, which means that they perform better on attention tests.  These students are more attentive, have goal-directed behavior, and strong executive functioning skills. So they should indeed continue to play sports and work on improving specific techniques. Just schedule practices and trainings when they don’t need to be preparing for a test.

It would be ideal for students to have time to run around the building between classes and before big tests.  They’ll learn more, perform better, and probably be more attentive in the class.