26 Best Brain Breaks for High Schoolers
September 26, 2024
Brain Breaks for High School Students – Decades of research show that taking breaks is beneficial for the brain. It’s specifically important for those brains that are still developing. High school students benefit tremendously from brief, regular breaks in demands on their concentration—and there’s a ton of science to back this up. When we’re asking our brains to concentrate, our prefrontal cortex is working hard in the background to shut down and quiet outside distractions. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for this kind of “think-work,” according to Northern Illinois University. The longer you work, the more taxing this “think-work” becomes on your brain. Think of it as an accumulated effect: the more your prefrontal cortex has to block out the noise, the more fatigued it can become. That’s where brain breaks for high schoolers come in.
Think about running 26.2 miles. Sure, you could do it all in a single bout—we call that a marathon. Or, you could break up the 26.2 miles across a full week and make the task a lot less taxing on your body. Why? Because you’ve given your muscles time to rest and your body more time to consume the energy you expended in each smaller section of the run. Once you’re fully trained, maybe running a full marathon at one time would be possible, but even the world’s most elite runners aren’t running marathons every day. They train, they take breaks, and they work in seasons.
Experts say the evidence is clear: it’s a good idea to do this with our brains, too.
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It’s of particular importance to note that rest is essential because it’s the time when our brains can do tasks essential to learning. Those tasks are things like “internally focused psychosocial mental processing, for example, when recalling personal memories, imagining the future, and feeling social emotions with moral connotations,” according to a study published in the journal Association for Psychological Science.
Taking breaks—both constructive reflection and free-form daydreaming—can have far-ranging effects for mental health, cognitive ability, reading comprehension, and divergent thinking.
Even simple things, like play or team-building games, can be a way to take a brain-boosting break.
In this post we’ll give you 26 examples of brain breaks tailored to the needs and interests of high school students. The activities can be physical, reflective, active, playful, or meditative—and they’ll all contribute to an environment of decreased stress, increased attention, and overall increased well being for you and your students.
Brain Breaks for High School Students
1) Big Kid Recess
Recess might seem like a thing that goes out the window when students graduate from elementary or middle school to high school. But studies show that “time in the school day dedicated to recess, physical education class, and physical activity in the classroom may also facilitate academic performance.”
Send students out to a nearby park, playground, or the basketball court to shoot hoops or play 4-square.
2) Spotify Collaborative Playlist + Dance Party
Using your own Spotify or YouTube account, ask students to feed their favorite upbeat jams directly into a collaborative playlist. If you want to monitor the content, they can also send you links so you can build it yourself. Then, when the day is getting a bit too heavy, take a pause, turn up the playlist, and invite your students to get a little loose. You can dance it out in the classroom—or find a friendly outdoor space like a courtyard or safe parking lot.
New research is demonstrating that dancing might be better than any other exercise for psychological and cognitive health. So, dance it out!
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3) Team Building Exercises
Another lowkey way to incorporate physical movement into a break is to do some team-building exercises. These are classic games like “knot and unknot” or the Hula Hoop Pass. You’ll have students out of their chairs, moving around, and developing fun new memories to connect as a community.
4) Improv Theater: The One-Word Story
Improv—or improvised—theater can help people break down barriers and open up connections they never thought to make before.
The One-Word Story is an easy exercise in which students build a story together. Each person in the group says just one word at a time until something comprehensible starts to take shape. You can do this in small groups or as a whole class to take the chaos to the next level!
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5) Improv Theater: The Mind Meld
This is a really fun game for two people to play, and the whole class can play at once to build a lot of energy in the room. Two students say the first word that comes to their mind at the same time until, eventually, they say the same word. You can make it a competition by rewarding the first, second, and third groups that “mind meld” by saying the same word at the same time!
6) Improv Theater: The improvised monologue
Do you have some really extroverted students who need to get their energy out? Invite them to do an improvised monologue. The rest of the class throws out words like a person, a place, and an activity (the speaker can choose which words they ultimately use) and then creates an improvised monologue based on those suggestions. You can give them a 2 or 3 minute timer to keep things curtailed, or just wait until the monologue reaches a natural end.
This game can be a challenge for other students to think extemporaneously, too, and more timid students can work up to their time in the spotlight over the course of weeks.
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7) Improv Theater: The improvised conversation
This is a similar version to the game above, but involves a conversation between two students instead of a single monologue. Students take suggestions from the class and try to keep the conversation going until it reaches a natural end. This is also something you can do in pairs with the entire class, using suggestions drawn from a hat. This can be a great way to get a quiet class talking, especially if you give them time to cut loose.
8) Improv Theater: Yes, And !
“Yes, And” is the principle behind improv theater that makes it work. Invite students to create small groups of 4–5, then draw a suggestion of a silly scenario from a hat. They should work together to “solve” the scenario, while always saying “Yes, And” to anything else a member of the group says, no matter how absurd. They should act out the proposals as the conversation goes along.
Example:
Louis: Hey, Steven, we should build a spaceship out of ham!
Steven: Yes, and, let’s make sure the spaceship has windows!
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9) Hallway “Scavenger Hunt”
If your class is particularly lethargic, give them time to play and explore. Put 15 or 20 minutes on the clock, and tell the class that they have that amount of time to go into the hallways of the school looking specifically for something they’d never seen before. They should go off in search of something completely new, and be prepared to come back to the class and report back about it.
It doesn’t matter what “it” is or if the students even complete the assignment. The goal is simply to get them up, to break the pattern of being in the classroom, and to reorient their brains toward new ideas.
10) Active Daydreaming
The goal here is just to let students’ brains wander free. This should be an activity where devices and computers are not permitted, so there’s no distraction. Give students a set amount of time to just silently daydream. They can doodle, write in a journal, and get up from their desks, but they shouldn’t be reading, studying, using their Chromebooks, or talking.
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11) Guided Meditations
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce stress and increase focus and self-awareness. Providing students with a break to do a guided meditation can help disrupt a stagnating energy and bring some renewed focus to your classroom.
UCLA Mindful has a great page of research-backed guided meditations from 5–15 minutes that you can turn on for a very zen break.
12) One Long Line
This is a great doodling break that can help your students de-stress. Have everyone take out a piece of blank paper and give them a few minutes to draw, never lifting their pencils, creating whatever they want or can create with one long line.
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13) Don’t Drop Your Pencil
Similarly to the above exercise, this journaling prompt helps to promote the free flow of ideas. Set a timer for five minutes, and give students a writing prompt of your choosing (or tell them they can free write). Instruct them to not stop writing for the entirety of the time allotted. Even if they’re just writing the same word over and over again, it doesn’t matter. They should keep writing and attempt to fill the time with language until the timer sounds.
14) Exquisite Corpse: Writing
The point of this exercise is to build a story sentence by sentence.
Take one piece of paper and have the first student write the first sentence of a story. They shouldn’t show anyone the sentence. (You can read examples from famous books to get them started.) Then, they fold the part of the paper over where they have written, ensuring no one else can read the sentence. The next student writes the next sentence in the story, folding the paper, and passing it along. The game proceeds like this until everyone has written (or the page is filled). Then, open the “corpse” and read the story!
You can pass around several pages at once to keep the entire class engaged.
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15) Exquisite Corpse: Drawing
You can do the same exercise as the one above, but with drawing instead of writing. Students simply start a little doodle and extend the lines to a specific point, then fold the paper, revealing only the lines that would connect to the next person’s doodle. They draw, fold by fold, until the page is filled. Open the page and see what kind of exquisite corpse they’ve made!
16) Mindful Walking
Similar to the mindfulness meditation above, you can take students out into a field or courtyard to do a walking meditation. Instruct students to walk without talking or non-verbally communicating with anyone else, focusing only on the sensations of walking. They should on the feeling of their feet on the ground, their shoes in their feet, the air on their skin, and the sun shining down on them. Instruct students to walk how and where they want, but always with the intention of paying attention to the sensations in their bodies and not the thoughts in their heads.
Attention: these kinds of mindfulness exercises can be triggering for some students with body-related trauma, so tread lightly and with caution depending on the makeup of your classroom. Or, simply make the exercise optional.
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17) DEAR: Drop Everything and Read
Take a half class period to simply give students time to read a book for pleasure. You can instruct them to bring books ahead of time. And you can schedule DEAR time weekly to give them something to look forward to.
18) Free Form Whiteboard/Chalkboard
Give students free, unrestricted access to draw on the whiteboard or chalkboard.
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19) Thumb Challenge
A fun, challenging brain teaser is to try the Thumb Challenge. Have students put a thumb up on one hand and point at their thumb with the index finger of the other hand (the second thumb should be held down—don’t make a finger gun). Then, switch. Point the finger of the thumb hand and put the thumb up on the pointer hand. Then, switch again. Practice again until students can do it quickly and fluidly. Here’s a helpful demonstration video.
20) Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament
Get students into pairs to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. Have them play “best out of three” with their partners. Then, pair up the winners of each round until you have the class champion!
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21) Zip Zap Zop!
This fun game puts students in a circle to send zips and zaps around the circle until they change direction with a zop! Check out to play with this instructional video.
22) Chill Music Playlist
Similar to the dance music playlist idea at the top of the list, have students create a collaborative playlist of “chill” or relaxed music. Put it on, turn off the lights, and give students time to write, draw, or close their eyes and put their heads down.
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23) Exercise Circuit
To get some physical movement in without having to go outside, set up five stations around the classroom to which students will move in small groups. Give them a small physical exercise to do for a minute before moving to the next station. Think: jumping jacks, high knees, butt kicks, arm circles, toe touches, and good mornings (without the barbell, of course). Put on some upbeat music and get that blood pumping!
24) Butcher Paper Mural
Get a roll of butcher paper and cover the walls of the classroom. Give students markers, crayons, and colored pencils, and let them draw big scenes to design a classroom mural. You can also take the paper out into the hallway and give them space to spread out.
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25) Two Truths and Lie
This classic icebreaker can also be a really fun break in general. Students should tell the class two true things about them and one feasible lie. The rest of the class has to guess the lie. If the student tricks the class, they get to pick the next liar! This can be a great way to invite storytelling and community building around your students’ lives, as well.
26) Self-Reflection
Give your students intentional prompts to help them reflect on their work in the class or their lives in general. Don’t collect the journals, just let the students vent to themselves. Some prompt ideas include:
-Looking back on your last academic year, what did you do well? What surprised you? What would you do differently?
-What’s weighing on you most heavily right now? What are some practical ways you can address the problem?
-List five things you’re grateful for today. Pick one and write about why you’re grateful for that thing.
-Who is one person you’d like to send kindness to today? Why?
-When was the last time you showed kindness to yourself? What did you do, and how did it make you feel? How can you incorporate more self-compassion into your everyday life?
Brain Breaks for High Schoolers – Additional Resources
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