Provide easy-to-use materials for classroom teachers to support classroom physical activity

A story from Nevada

We spoke with Tamalyn Taylor, Wellness Coordinator for Nye County School District in Nevada, to learn about how she created a toolkit for classroom teachers with easy-to-use materials for classroom physical activity.

Key Takeaways

Start with a wellness committee. During the 2017-2018 school year, Ms. Taylor worked with principals from two elementary schools to create wellness committees at the schools. As Ms. Taylor noted, “Just having a wellness committee at the school was a big deal!” Once established, the wellness committees set goals and even received grant funding to support the purchase of materials for classroom teachers to use for brain breaks and classroom physical activities.  The creation of the wellness committee prompted additional efforts to integrate physical activity into the classroom and turned goals into reality.

Find out what is already happening around classroom physical activity. Ms. Taylor approached teachers during their shared common planning time to conduct a short survey on how they were using physical activity in their classrooms.  The survey was short – only 4 questions – and asked if teachers were using brain breaks (i.e., physical activity integrated outside of academic instruction), how long brain breaks lasted, and what supplies they needed to start or continue incorporating brain breaks into their classroom. Surveys like Ms. Taylor’s or Springboard to Active School’s Classroom Physical Activity Assessment can help identify what’s already happening around classroom physical activity.

Provide easy-to-use materials that directly address classroom teachers’ needs. After reviewing the survey results and using the grant funds secured by the wellness committee, Ms. Taylor created a toolkit to help classroom teachers integrate more physical activities into their classrooms. The kits included physical activity dice, MyPlate beach balls, sensory balls, soft footballs, yoga flash cards, a book of wellness activities, along with additional resource links.  She packaged all of the materials in a canvas bag.

“I did hear from one of the teachers that she liked that [the toolkit] was in a bag that she could easily get to…Sometimes she would hold it out to [her students who] would pick what they would want to do.  It helped her engage the students a little bit more because [the materials were] in one place, in a bag.”

Support classroom teachers in using materials. For Ms. Taylor, her work with teachers didn’t end after she gave them their toolkits. Afterwards, she continued to support teachers to use the materials and encouraged them to take time during the week to share with one another activities they were implementing in their classrooms. By sharing what’s working, “[teachers] get practice using the supplies and learning other activities from [each other].”