Education Week - December 12, 2018 - 6

Karen Pulfer Focht for Education Week

Children rest during nap time at a preschool in Hughes, Ark. New research finds that naps help many young children
remember what they are learning in school.

Nap Time Boosts Learning, Studies Say

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By Sarah D. Sparks
For schools looking for ways to
squeeze in more instructional time
for young learners, preschool and
kindergarten nap time can be a
tempting target.
But emerging sleep research
suggests cutting out the afternoon
snooze can come at the expense of
some children's longer-term ability
to remember what they learn.
There's no nationwide data on
how many students nap in school.
But in an ongoing series of experiments funded by the National
Science Foundation, cognitive researchers Rebecca Spencer of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst and Tracy Riggins of the University of Maryland are tracking
how young children make the transition from napping to not, and what
happens if that transition is forced.
A major review of sleep research
in 2015 found no benefit to forcing
children to sleep if they have outgrown it, but Riggins and Spencer
suggest the transition out of napping is not uniform.
"Transitioning out of naps is not
a switch," Spencer said. "A lot of
developmental milestones are happening around [early grades], and as
they happen, the naps come and go.
They may be done napping now, but
a month from now, they may be back
on for a nap."
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By Daarel Burnette II
of characters overseeThere will be a new cast
in 2019-and many of
ing state education policy
shake things up to deliver
them will be looking to
they made on the camon the many promises
midterm elections.
paign trail in this year's
of them Democrats-are
New governors-many
ous budgets with new
expected to propose ambiti
K-12 systems. The fresh
ways of funding their
is
state board members
and
ors
govern
of
crop
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where they're appointed.
perintendents in places
or the other has
party
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where
And states
legislature and governornew control of both the
in Colorado, may use
ship, such as Democrats
school accountability and
that momentum to push
t
when the Every Studen
other changes at a time
greater policy authority.
Succeeds Act gives them
more important than
"States are going to be
presithe
n Amundson,
ever before," said Kriste
of
Nation al Associ ation
dent and CEO of the
tion. "There is less likeliState Boards of Educa
a single message from
hood that there will be
state by state, you'll see
the feds to states. But
decisions being made
important education policy
next year."

Democratic Gains

seven governors' seats
Democrats picked up
ers in this year's elecand seven legislative chamb
will have Democratic
tions. In January, 23 states
will have Republican
governors and 27 states
' legislatures will be
governors. Eighteen states
Democrats, 30 state legcompletely controlled by
lled by Republicans, and
islatures will be contro
Minnesota's-will be
only one state legislature-
ture is nonpartisan.)
split. (Nebraska's legisla
will be almost two
Amundson predicted there
elected state education
dozen new appointed and
Page 19>

Page 1 >

Week

akers
Turnover in Governors, Lawm
nnel
May Affect Policy and Perso

Bintou Sonko

Bintou Sonko, a senior

at Overland Park High School

, near Denver, reflects

on the civic discussions

in her social studies classes

Age
Teaching Civility in an
Some students
are learning
the art of civic
discourse

By Catherine gewertz

Nathan W. Armes for Education

Shakeups Loom
In Post-Election
State Landscape

bre Aking news dAilY

this year.

of Conflict

Clearing Space in the Brain

y.
work best for the countr
what soluti ons might
ed in
country who are involv
Educators around the
e skills say the need for
teaching these civil-discours
singly
increa
ally urgent as
them has become especi
exposes the degree to which
heated political rhetoric
are
and free-speech rights
Americans are polarized
under fire.
g
yelling and finger-pointin
"It's just a whole lot of
d of
over each other instea
out there, people talking
Lindsey Johnson, an
said
out,"
other
each
hearing
learning civil-discourse
11th grade student who's
r.
High School, near Denve
skills here at Overland
these habits, the sooner
"The sooner we can learn
10>

To understand how that occurs,
it's helpful to look at why some kids
tend to nap longer than others.
A landmark sleep study by Marc
Weissbluth, a pediatric sleep specialist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, finds that at age 4,
Migrant Students: gaining theirnearly 60 percent of children still
A Mission to Educoneate
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s
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providing educational service
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The first time they came
tions, learning, and memory, Riggins
and Spencer said. They found children who still need to nap several
times a week show less mature activity in both that brain region and
its connections to other areas of the
Aurora, Colo.

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Page

Alex Granados/ Education

Week

Bladen County, N.C.

a new
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(301) 280-3100 / reprints@epe.org
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 12, 2018 | www.edweek.org

Page 14>

brain, such as those associated with
critical thinking.
During a typical 60- to 90-minute nap, the researchers recorded
dense, rapid bursts of electrical activity called "spindles," that occur
as the brain consolidates what it
has just learned into long-term
memories.
"If you want to learn all the words
to your favorite song, you might
tape it and replay it," Spencer explained. "Essentially the brain is
taking the video of your day, recording patterns of information in cells
in the brain during the day, and
replaying them in the same order
while you sleep."
But younger and less mature children run out of that "recording space"
sooner than older children; they need
to sleep to process what they've
learned before their nighttime rest.
For example, the Common Core
State Standards call for kindergartners to be able to draw key details
from a story, an example of what
researchers call episodic memory.
While some other memory skills
improve steadily from ages 4 to
10, children make massive leaps
in their ability to remember details
and context from ages 4 to 6. So in
one study, the researchers asked
children at six preschools to play a
memory game in the morning, before their normally scheduled nap.
After they had successfully completed the game, some were randomly either encouraged to nap or
prevented from napping.
Later that afternoon, researchers
assessed how alert both groups of
children were, and how much they
remembered from the morning
game. Then they brought all of the
children back the following morning
to test how much they remembered
from the previous day.
Both nappers and non-nappers
were equally alert the first afternoon. But the next day, the children
who were kept awake during their
normal nap time forgot 12 percent
to 15 percent more than students
who had napped.
For about a third of students-
those who are still "habitual nappers" sleeping four or more days
a week-follow-up experiments
showed that missing a nap significantly reduced memory in a variety

of areas crucial for early learning,
from motor-skill development to
emotional regulation.

Pressures Against Rest
Some of the students who most
need that time to rest may be less
likely to get it, according to Peg
Oliveira, the executive director of
the Gesell Institute of Child Development, which studies early learning and school readiness.
Nap time "is a victim of the increased academic pressures in earlychildhood classrooms," Oliveira said.
"In schools that have the luxury of
students who arrive in kindergarten
ready for the demands of kindergarten, they feel they can relax a little
bit and provide time for naps and
play. But these tend to be more affluent [public] and private schools.
... The places that feel pressure to
show academic gains for students
feel they don't have the luxury to
give kids these ... cognitive breaks."
Riggins and Spencer are now
tracking preschool students longitudinally as they let go of napping, to
understand more about how children
develop during this period. Separate
studies have found that exposure to
trauma or poverty can delay the development of the hippocampus, and
others have similarly found that children who have been exposed to such
conditions may nap for more years.
Oliveira argued that providing opportunities to sleep at school may be
particularly important for children
who experience trauma or unstable
environments outside of school.
"It's important to recognize those
kids might not be having a solid
night of sleep," she said. "It's essential we give them a break during the
day; otherwise it's overload."
In schools that do have rest periods in early grades, "naps in school
need to be taken a bit more seriously," Spencer said. "Schools may
provide the opportunity, but do they
promote napping? People walk in
and out of the classroom with full-on
conversations. They should dim the
room, promote quiet, and separate
kids who are distracting."
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 3- to 5-year-olds
get 10 to 13 hours of sleep, including
naps, every 24 hours.

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Education Week - December 12, 2018

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