Learning through fun increases pupil participation

The issue A way to encourage pupils to be active for longer

Encouraging pupils to become more active in school for a longer, more sustained period of time can be difficult. Activities might be fun for a week or two but often activity drops off after a while.

The insights Learning through fun makes it easier to keep active

To make sure pupils enjoy being active over a longer period of time we believe they should learn through fun. Not only will this make the activity more enjoyable but it will also help to enhance the relationship between pupils and their teachers.

The solution An online dance competition between schools

We started a dance competition between schools by challenging pupils to create a flash mob with the help of their teachers. Students danced a self-made choreography under the coordination of a primary school or physical education teacher. To authenticate their dance they had to post a short video of the dance on the SETS Facebook page. The movie that collected the most likes won!

Besides this, we arranged daily SETS GymClass sessions to start classes with a refreshing 5 to 10 minute warm up session using simple and easy exercises.

The result Gymnastics boost gone viral

There were 138 flash mobs posted online from 82 schools with 9,751 primary pupils taking part coordinated by 491 teachers in total. Plus 105 schools enrolled in 2,878 GymClass activities for 11,413 students provided under the supervision of more than 460 teachers.

Daily gymnastics boosts energy when pupils are tired or not motivated. We found dancing to be a very relaxing activity that sparks joy and creates wellbeing. Teachers use GymClass as a fun break from learning. Students’ creativity is encouraged by having them choose the exercises and the choreography enables them to turn the 5 to 10 minutes of the SETS GymClass into a fun and relaxing time which can be repeated at any given moment.