Brain breaks help students learn languages better while they are relaxed

“Brain breaks allow students a few moments where they are up, out and focused on one thing for two-three minutes tops,” she said. “The basic philosophy behind a brain break is to downshift, but remain immersed in the topic of what is happening.”

Brewer, a master instructor of Latin and Ancient Mediterranean Cultures at Culver Academies, gave a 90-minute presentation on “"Why Brain Breaks are the Best Breaks” at the American Classical League Summer Institute.

Brewer said brain breaks are crucial at Culver because it is difficult for anyone, let alone high school students, to sit through a straight lecture for 80 minutes.

She said the breaks allow for something in a student’s short-term memory to be turned into a long-term memory. In world language classes that is where you build proficiency, by attaining and acquiring language in your long-term memory, Brewer said.

One brain break Brewer uses is called “This or that?” where she puts two pictures on the board and students must show her which they prefer. Under each picture there is a physical cue, such as clap your hands or high knees, written in Latin. The “This or that?” could be something such as TikTok or Instagram? Or more Culver specific, such as Papa’s or Frida’s?

“Because they don’t have to explain to me, they can just read and show me, it is low risk, high reward,” Brewer said. “They’re not being asked to create any language, which is typically high risk. They are just taking in language, which is typically low risk, and it’s using vocabulary that they’re comfortable with.”

Another brain break Brewer uses is she’ll say the word “green” in Latin and the students then must find something green. Or she will give them a number in Latin and they must find something with that number of things.

“It’s not gamifying everything necessarily, but by the time you get to Latin III and IV a lot of it is review,” she said. “That’s comforting, because they know what they’re doing.”

She said it’s also good to get students up and moving after they’ve been sitting for a while.

She said during a shorter, 45-minute class, brain breaks aren’t needed as much.

“Because I can do things that are more engaging and maybe a bit more difficult. Then I can downshift the conversation and do something a little less stressful,” she said.

For the presentation, she wanted to look not only at the wide variety of brain breaks, but also: Why neurologically do they work? How do brain breaks as a teaching tool reinforce that movement of information from introduction to short-term memory to working to long-term memory.

“I want to arm teachers with the information about why brain breaks work so if an administrator or someone who is not familiar with what it’s like to teach in a classroom questions them, they can say: ‘Here’s what I’m doing and here’s the science about why what I’m doing works.’ So they also have the rationale,” Brewer said.

She said some teachers struggle with brain breaks because they can go off the rails if a teacher isn’t comfortable with classroom management. Brewer said it can be especially difficult at schools where teachers could have 25 to 30 students.

She said because Culver provides teachers with the freedom to try new things and students are willing to participate, she’s been able to try out a lot of brain breaks over the years. She said she can tell teachers what brain breaks she’s found to be effective and which are not.

“I can tell teachers these things do work, so you’d be better off using these things than those things,” Brewer said.

She’s also been able to see how other teachers use the breaks and adapt them to her Latin class.

“I can see the brain break in action, but also how a teacher facilitates them. So I can see them in a lab classroom environment,” she said.

Brewer said the 90-minute presentation was the longest she’s ever given, so she provided some brain breaks.

Brewer and Evan Armacost, another Latin instructor at Culver, gave a presentation on how they assess students at the American Classical League Summer Institute several years ago and used brain breaks during the presentation. Brewer said they got more questions about brain breaks than on how they assess.

She said that’s what led to her proposing the brain break presentation.

Brewer hopes teachers attending the presentation feel empowered to use brain breaks to maximize how much time their students are using Latin. The breaks also can be used to preview areas teachers want to work on.

“As long as you understand how it’s working, the breaks can be molded and leveraged in helping students remain in the language for a longer period of time,” she said.