With all the emphasis on No Child Left Behind from an academic point of view, the educational, social, emotional and physical benefits of good-old-fashioned recess are being compromised as time for outdoor play is shortened or eliminated all together in some elementary schools. In the process, childhood itself gets left behind.

True, more children today need to be taught how to play with the same intentionality that they need to be taught how to read and write, but that just lets us know how especially important this time during the school day is. At our school, and many schools employing Responsive Classroom strategies, recess at the beginning of the school year is taught for the first week or so with students practicing recess rules, use of playground equipment, safe tagging and rotating through a number of recess stations to learn games they may not have played before.

The same discipline rules used in the classroom and school-wide are employed for misbehavior at recess. Children are told to “Take-A- Break” on a bench or the curb of the playground if they are heard being unkind, exclusionary or seen being physically rough or unsafe. If this de-escalation technique is not successful the logical consequence for misbehavior at recess is to loose recess the following day. Children are seldom kept in from recess for missing work or for misbehavior in the classroom because staying in from recess is not seen as related to their behavior in class; it is not a logical consequence. Classroom consequences can include coming in early before school to finish class work or having extra homework to complete assignments (for more information on logical consequences, see this article on the Responsive Classroom web site).

We have reminder recess sessions for children who are habitual breakers of recess rules and call their parents to discuss the issue. We schedule practice recess sessions after long holiday breaks or, in our climate, after a winter when we have not been out on the playground too much because of cold. Needless to say, special rules regarding proper attire and use of snow also apply in the winter.

Next September we hope to join National Recess Week to draw special attention to preserving this critical physical and social outlet for children.  I’d also like to point your attention to this report by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation: Recess Rules. (Please note that it opens as a PDF).