Article: How Physical Fitness May Promote School Success

This article goes over how physical exercise can affect academic performance. Apparently, students who are more physically active and fit can memorize and take in more information during school than kids who are out of shape and not that physically active. “A representative study, presented in May at the American College of Sports Medicine, found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who ran around and otherwise exercised vigorously for at least 10 minutes before a math test scored higher than children who had sat quietly before the exam.” So, exercising during recess for grade school students will definitely help their grades, even if they don’t notice it. This theory can easily be seen in children, considering it’s easy to see which students are physically active and which ones are not, and that observation can be taken to the classroom where these children can be evaluated to see if the physically active ones score higher grades than the ones that are not. From this study, I believe that physical fitness can make more use of the brain and improve it’s potential to absorb information and memorize it, thus improving academic performance. “Researchers have repeatedly found connections between fitness and brain health, which naturally impacts all areas of brain function, such as cognitive thinking skills and memory.” Physical fitness not only helps children achieve better grades, but it also suggests a positive relationship with classroom behavior, as well as cognitive, social, and motor skill development. Exercise has these effects on children because it actually increases oxygen flow to the brain and increases brain neurotransmitters. Basically, in order for schools to have overall higher grades, they need to increase the amount of time that their students can have the opportunity to exercise and be active, and schools that are cutting away their recess time and its physical education programs are only limiting its students academic achievement and giving them less opportunities to expand their knowledge and improving it by exercising.