The best 7 ways to take a brain break! Did you know that brains need breaks?


If you are struggling to get your learners to focus at any point in your lesson it could be because pupils simply need breaks ,in particular their brains! Learners on average have 5-6 hours of learning time across many different subjects every day, and their brains are expected to remain focused at all times during these periods. As the saying goes, “they are only human”.

Try using one of the following brain breaks at some point in your lesson and sit back and see the impact that it can make on learning and progress in your classroom.

Please share and leave your comments below. It would be nice to know what worked for you.

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  1. With your forefinger and thumb of each hand pinched together, extend your hands out in front of your face and trace large circles in the same direction. Keep your lips and teeth together. Now trace the circles in the other direction. Now try with one hand going clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. Swap again.
  2. With your writing hand hold an imaginary pencil in front of your face and write the keywords from your lesson in the air. Say the letters of the word as you write. When you have finished try and write them backwards. For fun, write the keywords in the air but with your nose! Watch your neighbour and try and guess what the word is. Now try it with your ear!
  3. Hold your ears and slowly roll your ear lobes between finger and thumb. Do it nice and slowly and all the way around your ear. How does it feel?
  4. With your elbows at shoulder height, practise making big circles, then small circles, forwards and backwards.
  5. Do finger aerobics! With a partner sit alongside each other or either side of your desk. Your partner should place both hands flat on the desk and so should you. Take turns to lift different fingers without taking any other fingers off the desk. Do it together and in sequence. Start with simple lifts with each finger in turn, then taps, then bends, then big stretches! Now one of you be the aerobics instructor and the other has to do exactly the exercises the instructor demonstrates!
  6. Practise shoulder shrugs. Roll your shoulders forwards, then back.
  7. Use finger sums by showing your partner a number sum with your fingers and then seeing if your partner can get the correct answer. Remember crossed hands means add, one hand across your face means take away, hands in a diagonal is multiple and a hand across your face with a dot above and below is divide. Start with 5 times 4 equals…?

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