Flash Mobs, Assemblies, and Room Crashing

We started our first staff meeting of the year with dancing, skipping, and playing hot potato with balloons. Why? Because our principal paired with our local university who explained the benefits of students taking physical activity breaks. Even though you are taking time away from teaching, you are actually increasing the students' focus, boosting moral in the classroom, and fighting the childhood obesity epidemic.

This may remind you of the popular term "Brain Breaks," however in my opinion the main difference is the length of time.

Our school started what we call "PEAK" (Can't remember what it stands for, sorry!) which involves every classroom stopping at some point during the day to take a 10-15 minute physical activity break. The professors gave each staff member balloons, bean bags, and a cd filled with dance songs such as the Electric Slide, Macarena, Cupid Shuffle, Cha Cha Slide, etc. to get us started.

Of all the physical activities we do during "PEAK," dancing is my students' favorite choice. 

If you download Real Player it lets you download any YouTube video to your computer. The teachers at our school downloaded a ton of dance videos from YouTube and placed them in a common folder on the computer. You may want to download Real Player on your home computer if you cannot access YouTube on your school computer/ if your school internet is slow (nothing like being in the middle of a video and having to stop while it buffers -_- ). When it's downloaded it plays right through evvveery time! Side note: Do that for videos you use for all subject areas! 

Since PEAK's inception the students and staff have fallen in love with it. We can't get enough of it, in fact, after our school assemblies we get together and surprise the students with a flash mob! 

Our very first flash mob was coordinated by our phys. ed teacher, she simply put the Cha Cha Slide on and all the students and staff stood up did the Cha Cha Slide for about 4 minutes, then Cha Cha'd our way back to class. Now THAT'S an exit! 

Recently we've started doing the conga line to music as we make our back to class. The best part is seeing everyone grades 1-5 let loose in organized chaos, then go back to class ready to learn in 5 minutes flat! It's amazing how quick they get back to work.

Room Crashing is something my hallways has started doing once in a while planned and unplanned. If we here music coming from another classroom and we're ready to start PEAK we may sneak over and crash that classroom's PEAK if they're doing line dances. Usually the teachers talk during lunch and let the kids think it was spontaneous. 

Yesterday, as our Valentine's Day party was winding down and the sugar was kicking in and making my kids  wild, we put on one of their favorite dance videos, One Direction (from Just Dance 4). 

Here's a quick peek of my kids on their sugar highs: