New toolkit to promote physical activity in classrooms 

These resources are split into grade ranges - kindergarten to grade 3, grades 4 to 6 and grades 7 to 8. (Campus Production/Pexels) Dek: Western researchers create online hub with more than 200 physical activity videos, games for teachers  A free toolkit developed by researchers at Western University addresses an urgent need: boosting physical activity of children in Ontario's classrooms. Under the provincial government's current  daily physical activity (DPA) policy , elementary students are required to receive at least 20 minutes of DPA each school day during instructional time. Despite the policy's creation, and the multitude of benefits that physical activity provides, researchers at Western's Faculty of Education recently found that  only 23 per cent of teachers in the province  were hitting the DPA target. Some of the top barriers preventing sufficient DPA were inaccessible resources, insufficient teacher training and a lack of time and space in schools, according to  Barbara Fenesi , professor of education assistant and Western's Canada Research Chair in the Science of Learning. The findings stem in part from a large collection of research on physical activity in students carried out by the  Working to Enhance Brain and Body Research (WEBB) Lab , where Fenesi serves as lab supervisor. "We wanted to put a pause on the research that is looking at identifying barriers.