This study investigated the academic achievement and physical activity differences between types of activity breaks implemented in elementary school classrooms. This study evaluated whether there was a difference between the impact of purely aerobic-based movement breaks and the impact of academic-based breaks on children's academic achievement outcomes.
Participants included 460 children in 3rd grade through 5th grade at 4 elementary schools. There were 176 children in the schools that engaged in academic-based breaks and 284 in the schools that engaged in aerobic-only breaks. Schools were randomly assigned at the school level to implement either aerobic movement breaks with academic content infused within the breaks ("academic-based breaks") or aerobic-only movement breaks without the addition of academic material ("aerobic-only breaks") for approximately 10 min of activity per day. Math and reading achievement as well as children's step counts were measured before and after the intervention. A mixed-effects (multilevel-growth) model, in which the repeated measures of individuals nested within a classroom are analyzed, was used to answer all posited research questions.
Small to moderate effect sizes (ES) indicating gains in reading achievement (ES = .13) and steps (ES = .33) were found for classrooms that used aerobic-only movement breaks compared with those that used academic-based breaks.
The type of movement breaks that are implemented in classrooms may have differential outcomes for children's achievement and activity levels. Results from the present study indicate that children who were given aerobic-only movement breaks had slightly larger gains in reading achievement and physical activity levels than children who were given academic-based breaks.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 March 2018.
All research outputs
#2,226,195
of 34,411,289 outputs
Outputs from Research Quarterly for Exercise & Sport
#93
of 1,118 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#36,367
of 372,404 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Research Quarterly for Exercise & Sport
#3
of 13 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,411,289 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,118 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 372,404 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 13 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
