Improving Concentration in Class Using FUNtervals

4 minutes of fun-filled activities may be all that is needed to get children to concentrate on their school work, according to a study conducted by a team from Canada’s Queen’s University. We can improve concentration in class using FUNtervals.

The study, involving some 44 school children in Grade 2 and 4, was a three week long monitoring of the children’s concentration after recess, with children being alternated between enjoying a passive 10 minute break or an activity-filled 4 minute break.

During the passive break, children were taught about healthy living, but in the active break, called a FUNterval by the researchers, the children were tasked with various imaginative activities, such as starting a fire by ‘exploding into a star jump’, or collecting some imaginary firewood. These activities, 8 in total, lasted for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second rest period.

The school children were then observed for the next 50 minutes after the recess.

It was observed that the pupils who had come from an active break tended to be more attentive in class than those coming from a passive break. Furthermore, the improvement in concentration was greatest in those pupils who seemed the most inattentive after a passive break, suggesting that the FUNterval helps those very exuberant children to expend just enough of their energy so that they are not fidgety and generally restless when they are back in class.

Besides improving a pupils’ concentration, the FUNterval can also help schools meet the daily physical activity quota for school children, which is 20 minutes in Ontario, where the research was based.

The exercises carried out in the FUNterval only require an imaginative mind and the littlest of spaces; these, plus the fact that the exercises last only 4 minutes, means that it can even be conducted in the middle of a class when it seems like the student’s attention is drifting off.

Africa Global News Publication