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Don’t ban recess games–teach skills

Date: May 10th, 2016
By: Polly Bath

We can’t just keep banning things on the playground! When kids don’t know how to do stuff, are getting hurt, or getting into trouble, we end up taking it away.

We have banned wall ball. We have banned football. We’ve banned tag. We’ve banned dodge ball. We’ve banned Red Rover. We’ve banned four square. We’ve banned all of these games on the playground.

We’ve banned tag in some places! Now we have a bunch of kids on the playground walking around going, “I don’t know what to do.”

Then, we complain that they’re not active enough. We’ve banned everything because, instead of having to address the skill that they lack and to teach them, we just say, “No doing it anymore.” That’s not a good practice.