This is one of the novelties of the new school year in elementary schools: students do half an hour of physical activity every day. A measure that aims to get children moving outside of recess and sports lessons. The objective is to fight against a sedentary lifestyle, with playful practices.
At the primary school in Cotignac, a small town in the Var hinterland, where franceinfo visited, at the end of recess all the students return to their class. Except CM1-CM2: for them it’s time for 30 minutes of sport. Their teacher, Patrice Berne, organizes them into two groups: dodgeball on one side, skipping rope on the other. The children are delighted: “I think it’s good because sport is importantsays a student. It’s dynamic and it works the muscles. So I think it’s good.” One of his comrades even adds: “Doing 30 minutes for me is not enough because after that, I’m not exhausted yet!”
Every day the exercises change. It is varied, at the whim of the teacher. In fact, there is no precise framework. But that’s not really a problem for Patrice Berne: “It doesn’t take a lot of time to set up the activity. We think a little bit upstream. We have a lot of documents from the ministry, in terms of support, from which we draw sessions. It flows by itself This allows the children to be remobilized on another lesson afterwards by taking a break, or on the meridian time, that is to say during the lunch break.”
Her colleague Athéna Mazué is a little more skeptical. These sessions are not easy to fit, she believes, into an already busy schedule: “I think it’s interesting. Afterwards, you have to take on another subject. Which ones? It’s time that you don’t spend doing something else.”
“There are benefits, that’s for sure, but you have to organize it properly so that it doesn’t encroach on fundamental knowledge.”
Athéna Mazué, teacher in Cotignacat franceinfo
To implement this system, educational advisers go around the schools, like Bruno van Hierde: “These 30 minutes are a way for children to move because it is a major national issue in relation to lung capacity, in relation to children’s weight gain. It is essential for health. So it you have to dialogue to explain, implement with them. And there, it works.”
And convince teachers that this measure is not a gimmick, but a tool for the well-being of children.