Dr Taylor was delighted to present Active Bodies, Active Minds, the physical activities package designed by her team to stimulate greater engagement and enjoyment in regular moderate-to-vigorous physical activity by primary school children managing symptoms of ADHD.
Background: Schools aspire to help every child reach their maximum potential, through development of their cognitive, physical and social skills. Primary school class teachers typically support between one and three children managing extra challenges, for example symptoms of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This research team showed that regular, moderate-to-vigorous physical activities designed to increase children’s enjoyment and engagement with the activities in physical education (PE) lessons, were associated with increased engagement in other lessons and school activities, with significant improvement for the children with ADHD. The Active Bodies, Active Minds scheme was designed to be quick and easy to use by anyone with or without specialist PE training. The next stage to enable wider implementation was to adapt the scheme for use in regular PE curriculum.
Purpose: The aim of this pilot study was to test whether the Active Bodies, Active Minds scheme could be successfully implemented while adhering to the PE curriculum, and what effect that might have on the symproms of ADHD in non-PE lessons.
Methods: The PE lesson plans were co-created by the researcher and class teacher by selecting the Pas from the PE curriculum that met the AbAm criteria. The class teacher led the sessions and the researcher collected weekly data from the 8-9yr old children (study group with ADHD and controll group of classmates). Measures included the children’s percieved exertion and enjoyment of each PA, and teacher-reported attention and behaviour in the non-PE lessons.
Results: Symptoms of ADHD were significantly reduced over the study period. All the children involved, both study and control group expressed overall enjoyment of the activities and moderate to vigorous engagement for the majority of the main activities.
Conclusions: Class teachers can use physical activities meeting the AbAm criteria in the PE curriculum to provide engaging short-duration main activities with opportunities for choice and leadership by the children and achieve moderate to vigorous work intensity in the main activities. This can maintain engagement of all the children in the class including those managing symptoms of ADHD. The results also revealed improved attention and behaviour during non-PE lessons by the children with symptoms of ADHD.