Reflection Media Source
For Better Grades, Try Gym Class
Statistics 6070
Ryan Shannon
Reflection media source: For better Grades, Try Gym Class
Click here for the word document of this reflection including peer feedback
In this study we are trying to connect younger students connection with learning and gym class.
In this case there were two studies done that were trying to correlate if a gym class would help students focus in the classroom. The first study was conducted on 138 younger students of the age 8-11, none of which suffered from serious attention deficits; however, they lost concentration as the school day progressed. There were a couple of interesting results. The study noticed that the mind-less activities were yielding a higher concentration. This was shown by having student perform a written test that required them to pick out certain letters from a long chain of symbols in a short time. This test is widely accepted as a good indicator of attention and concentration. The same study that was done on the younger students in Italy proved that exercise that required focus, such as learning motor skills, had less concentration after than running around for 50 minute gym class. The researchers concluded that thinking and moving was “an excessive stress load” on their brain.
A similar study was conducted on lab rats at the Dartmouth University. The researcher had the rats work on a wheel for three weeks prior to shinning a light into the cage. There are rats that have tendencies to be attracted to light. Some eventually lose attention, but those who have attention deficit stay attracted or continue to return to the light. The attention deficit rats were on running wheels for three weeks prior to the shinning of light experiment already conducted to the same rats. This significantly altered the young animals behavior.
I would introduce this study to my students as a take home project. I would like for them to show that everything you read is not totally true and exemplify an understanding of how to interpret an article in the newspaper- One as reputable as the New York Times. This study was conducted on kids, and they were run for 50 minutes then told to take an exam. “What if the kids were to rest for a longer period? Does their attention fade? In gym class how much do you just run around? “ I would also like to try to do this as a homework experiment project. I think that it may be far fetched, but I would be inspired to have them try to conduct this study on their own house before they have started homework and see if they notice a difference in their ability to focus.
I think that the study may be a little inadequate. Americans have a tendency to be placed in ADHD much higher then those of foreign countries. Also foreign countries tend to be more active than the United States. This may attribute to being more focused as well. Final Remarks I like the paper! In fact, I would like to hear/see more of your thoughts in the paper. One thing I would add is some sort of line about inferential bias on the part of the researchers. It seems like you want the students to be able to recognize bias whenever they read an article, so I think it would be good to verbalize this in the paper. I think you did a good job with the summary! Overall, I loved it! I’m definitely going to use this in my classroom! (Or something similar) Oh yeah, the length is good.