Letting Boys Be Physically Active Benefits Their Reading Development

This week’s article summary is Boys Who Sit Still Have a Harder Time Learning to Read.

Last week’s article summary focused on things we can do in the classroom to support girls—this week’s focus is on boys.

Most of us believe—as parents and/or as teachers—that boys and girls by and large learn and behave in class differently.

The study in the article below found a positive correlation between boys’ reading progress in first grade and ample opportunities to be physically active in school. Conversely, when boys had a lot of sedentary work in the classroom, they showed less progress in reading.

Sedentary activities for girls, however, did not negatively affect their reading progress.

This is disturbing as so many elementary schools in trying to be more academically rigorous and score well on high-stakes standardized tests demand more and more seat work from their students.

One of our many advantages at Trinity is that our success is not measured by high-stakes testing. Yes, our students take standardized tests, yet that is one of many ways we assess our students and ourselves. Thus, we don’t feel the pressure to teach to the test and to move away from classroom pedagogies we know foster student learning—like cooperative learning and frequent recess.

As a school that strives to develop the whole child, being physical, having recess, and getting to move around in the classroom a lot are all important ways in which we strengthen academic and cognitive development—and, as the article attests, better reading in boys!

Joe

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Anybody who has watched little boys for even five seconds knows that they are exhausting. At school, they tear around the playground, bolt through corridors and ricochet off classroom walls.

According to a new Finnish study, this is all helping them to be better at reading.

The study found that the more time kids in Grade 1 spent sitting and the less time they spent being physically active, the fewer gains they made in reading in the two following years. In first grade, a lot of sedentary time and no running around also had a negative impact on their ability to do math.

Among girls, sitting for a long time without moving much didn’t seem to have any effect on their ability to learn.

The study found that lower levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity, higher levels of sedentary time, and particularly their combination, were related to poorer reading skills in boys.

While the test group was small, the study offers some evidence for what parents have been thinking for a long time: we may not be educating boys the right way.

As pressure increases on schools to show evidence of learning, many education systems have tried to provide a more academically rich environment. But sometimes this has come at the cost of physical education and/or recess.

The connection between exercise and learning is not new, but the Finnish study provides stronger objective evidence that the increased emphasis on sedentary academic activity among the youngest learners may be fruitless if it comes at the cost of physical activity. Boys whose days were more sedentary when they were in first grade (a crucial year for learning to read) made fewer gains in reading in second and third grade. They also did worse at math for that year.

The authors aren’t sure why the difference between boys and girls is so stark. Not as many girls participated in the study, so that may have influenced results. Moreover, it may have less to do with the difference between the male and female brain; for girls, academic achievement may be more influenced by factors such as parental educational support, peer acceptance, teachers’ positive attitude and their own motivation.