Research Says: Exercise Helps You Learn!

Photo courtesy of Celia Takahashi

Our bodies are made to move, and nowhere is this more evident than in a growing child. You have only to sit and watch any toddler for a few minutes to know this to be fact. As parents, we want to prepare our children to be successful in school, and reading to your children while they are toddlers and preschoolers is great preparation for the many hours of prolonged sitting and listening that school requires. 

So when my second son was a toddler, I would attempt daily to sit him in my lap and read aloud to him. But he had other plans, and no sooner was the book open then he would hop off my lap and walk around the room, pulling toys off the shelves to play; or grab his latest Lego project and begin building.

 The first time this happened, I continued reading the three books I had selected and wondered whether or not he was listening. The second time it happened, I left off reading in the middle of the story. At this point he spun around and scolded me, saying, “Don’t stop. I was listening!” 

 Needless to say, his transition to circle-time in preschool was a rough one, and, true to his learning style, he would be busy fidgeting or fiddling with his clothes or shoe laces when his teacher would call on him for an answer.  Yet despite appearing not to be paying attention he would, without fail, produce the correct answer.

 More and more we hear of schools doing away with recess and reducing time spent in physical education class—all with the aim of boosting educational achievement. This has made me wonder about the effects these changes are having on high-energy children like my son.  

 In a recently published book by John Rately and Eric Hagerman entitled Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, the case is made that the brain performs best when the body is exposed to regular exercise, specifically aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise increases blood flow to the brain, which stimulates the blood vessels and provides the brain access to energy and oxygen. All that increased blood flow stimulates the dentate gyrus, which is the area of the brain responsible for memory formation. For those worried about dementia, aerobic exercise has also been found to slow normal degradation of neurons.

 A program conducted by the Naperville Central High School in Illinois for students underperforming in literacy demonstrated the importance of physical activity to academic achievement. Students underperforming in literacy participated in an early morning physical education session that was immediately followed by a literacy support class. In the evaluation of the program, it was found that the students who had participated in the physical education session prior to the literacy intervention gained 1.34 years of improvement on a standardized reading test, while those receiving solely the literacy intervention made only about 0.7 years of improvement.

 So, while we ponder ways of boosting the academic achievement of our students, let us not forget that children possess different learning styles, and that new approaches may be key to raising readers. Indeed, some of the least obvious subjects, such as physical education, art and music, may provide just what is needed most by our struggling readers.