5 Easy Brain Breaks for Your Classroom
NUMBER 2 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000. This one goes all the way back to April 2017, when the show was brand new, and it has been downloaded 27,314 times — the second most-listened-to episode in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.
Rob Donatelli, a high school business educator in York, Pennsylvania, brings five brain breaks you can run tomorrow with no prep and almost no supplies. A brain break, as Rob describes it, is a chance for students to step away from high-level processing, have some fun, and refocus so they can get back to learning at their highest potential.
The five: a backward race through the room, 60-second pitches, Name Three Things, cell phone ping pong, and the penny arm flip. Each takes a few minutes. Several of them build the soft skills students rarely get to practice — talking, pitching, and thinking on their feet.
Rob also answers the question every teacher has: what happens when someone walks in to observe and thinks you're just playing? When his school moved from 42-minute to 68-minute class periods, his administration encouraged brain breaks to help teachers chunk instruction. And the students noticed. "If I don't do this, Vicki, they're begging me," he says.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- What a brain break is and why students need one
- The backward race: a whole-class reset that gets everyone moving
- 60-second pitches: a brain break that builds public speaking
- Name Three Things: a fast head-to-head for quick processing
- Cell phone ping pong and the penny arm flip — two games students will ask for
- What to say to an observer who thinks you're playing
- Why novelty and breaking routine make a classroom remarkable
Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e993
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