Refocus Students With Silent Brain Breaks

When it comes to brain breaks in the classroom, there are so many possibilities out there. But not every option works for every student and every classroom. I’ve found that playing silent games can help teachers give students a reset without worrying about the noise level or needing to reregulate the class after an overly exuberant exercise. Silent games are also a great equalizer, as they allow students, regardless of how communicative they are, to participate fully without added stress.

A silent brain break might sound like this: “OK, first graders, it’s time for Memory Charades! Today we are going to show our partner…” (the class waits expectantly) “...an activity we do after school. Remember, no talking and use your full body to act it out. Hold in your mind what you see your classmate doing, and then you get to share it with the group. Three, two, one, action!”

A hush falls over the students. Yet while there is absolute silence, if you walked around the room, you would see them busy communicating, albeit wordlessly, with each other. When the teacher calls “Time!” the students circle up and share what they have observed. “I saw Olive petting a cat!” “I saw Jamir making a sandwich!” “Milo plays video games after school!”

The students were invested in a simple game of charades using gestures rather than words to answer the teacher’s prompt. Shyness, or the frustration around expressing themselves perfectly, are replaced by the thrill of communicating in a new way. As counterintuitive as it might seem, when we take away the talking, the students become more brave and expressive.

The five minutes of silent observational “play” invigorated the learners with a newfound knowledge of their peers and a calm mental space from which they could return to learning.

3 MORE SILENT GAMES TO REFOCUS YOUR CLASSROOM

There are tons of theater games I love to bring to classrooms, including Memory Charades, explained above, but these three simple, silent games are some of my favorites. Although they are technically theater games, they can easily be adapted for the K–2 classroom as a way to offer students a short reset before learning continues.

For each of these games, I recommend modeling with a co-teacher or even with a student before you play for the first time.

1. Mirror. Mirror is an improvisation technique created by Viola Spolin, the pioneer of children’s theater games. The game is played in pairs, with the potential for the whole class to play simultaneously. One partner is the leader and the other is the reflection, and the point of the game is for the reflection to accurately copy the movements of the leader. I like to name each partner as A and B so that they can easily switch between being the leader and the reflection.

For example, you can say, “A, you start leading the movement. B, you follow.” When the time is up (I suggest starting with 30 seconds), you call out for B to now lead the movement and A to become the reflection. The leader may make silly faces, use their whole body to make movements, or slowly move just their arms up and down. The options are endless, but the important thing is that the reflection is exactly matching the leader.

Our brains have “mirror neurons” that light up when you imitate or copy behavior you see. The Mirror game is a phenomenal exercise to activate these neurons, which neuroscientists believe are the root of empathy.

When introducing the game to students, it can be helpful to remind students to move slowly enough that their reflection can keep up. When it’s played well, an outside observer might not be able to tell who was the leader and who was the follower.

2. Sculpture/Molding. In this game there is an “artist” and “clay.” While clay is traditionally molded by hand, to respect physical boundaries for students in the classroom, you can have the artist model the body that they want their clay to take on.

In practice, this looks like one student serving as the artist and deciding, or being told, what to sculpt. Then, they model the body position they want their clay to take. As the clay shapes him- or herself, the artist continually walks around the clay, providing silent feedback and direction by modeling the small details. After about two minutes, the students can switch roles.

You can encourage students to create sculptures based on books they’ve read in class, or you can use this as a social and emotional learning activity and have students sculpt different emotions. You can also create titles for the sculpture using silly noun and adjective combos, like “The Angry Butterfly” or based on your class book, like “Matilda’s Revenge,” for students to sculpt.

3. Movement Story. In the Movement Story game, students retell a story using just their bodies in a series of silently acted-out scenes. They can work in groups of two to four. Students begin by discussing what they want to represent from the story or use a graphic organizer to plot it out. Ultimately, the challenge is to present it all silently, and the fun of this is in having their classmates guess what parts of the story they chose to depict.

While this game does require a bit of talking to start, it can very quickly shift into a silent game once students are in their groups and have decided what they will act out.

For example, a first-grade class working on their Fables unit might have a group that chooses to make their Movement Story based on “The Tortoise and the Hare.” They would pick three moments from the story that represent the beginning, middle, and end.

By combining various frozen images to show one story arc, students gain practice in synthesizing information, narrative sequencing, and focusing on the “main idea.” In acting these out in front of the class silently, they are working on essential English language arts skills while practicing focus and attention.

These brain breaks provide both a moment of calm and an opportunity for students to positively engage with one another. The icing on the cake is that you can also weave your curricular goals into any of these games for a little academic boost as needed. But however you decide to bring silent games into your classroom, your students are going to find themselves delighting in the challenges while resetting their brains to be ready for more structured learning when the game ends.