School Recess and its Role in Child Development - Education

As the bell rings in the afternoon, all the students run rapidly to the play ground. Some sit in their respective seats to have lunch together. Sharing the lunch with each other, playing hide and seek, and jumping over the walls are the characteristics of this 40 minute of school time popularly known as the ?recess time?. Kickball, tag, jump rope and hopscotch may look like recess activities, but what kids gain from them are actually social skills, teamwork and a readiness to learn.

Recess is that time of the school hours when children get a time for free play. The span of recess varies from school to school. Some schools have 40 minutes of recess, while others may have 30 minutes. But schools these days are reducing this time just to meet the modern day competitive needs.

This play time is being gradually replaced with more instructional time to meet the new test standards.

During the recess, children play, organize their own games, develop their own rules, learn problem-solving skills, and practice leadership. This helps them increase their stamina and presence of mind. A recent study has unveiled the fact that free play is a healthy practice that helps children reach important social, emotional and cognitive developmental milestones apart from helping them manage the stress of studies.

A close connection to nature is very crucial during its development stage. In this superfast era, children get less time to play outside and the main reason for this is the growing study pressure. Modern day houses don?t have enough space where children can play games or run feely. So school is the ideal place to be in touch with nature.

Almost all the schools have their own play grounds and play facilities.

So children can spend their recess in a more productive way by playing games in close relation with nature. Recess does more than make children better behaved and more attentive at school. Playground?based challenges such as disputes over game rules, teams, and sharing space and equipment can also be learnt during recess time.

Recess is also considered to be a great time to cultivate social skills. During this free time, students of the same class or different classes share their lunch, play different games, and at times get involved in healthy discussions on current issues. Such discussions not only made the children aware of different issues, but also help them develop public speaking skills.

In allowing a mental change and release of energy, recess may facilitate subsequent attention to more academic tasks and minimize disruptive behavior once students return to the classroom; recess, therefore, becomes an important element of classroom management and behavior guidance. Providing opportunities for active, free play with peers facilitates the encoding and decoding of social signals. The mechanisms involved are every bit as cognitive as math. With the recent hypothesis that domain-specific brain modules may have evolved to process social information, it could be intimated that some cognitive benefits are a direct consequence of physical activities.
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Source: http://education.ezinemark.com/school-recess-and-its-role-in-child-development-7d30ea67d6c4.html

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