Dive Brief:

• Created by HealthTeacher Inc., GoNoodle gives teacher's mini-activities to calm down, pump up, and refocus students for learning.  
• Based entirely online, the GoNoodle activities are nicknamed "Brain Breaks" and teachers who have adopted the program use it an average of four times each day to re-center students for productive learning time.  
• Since launching last August, the program has reached over 2 million students. The company plans to integrate more academics into its games in the future.    

Dive Insight:

Teaching a distracted student is difficult, yet teachers push though all the time. GoNoodle posits that instead of relentlessly pushing through for fear of wasting instruction time, teachers should acknowledge that students are off track, realize it's normal (they're kids), and take five minutes to re-focus them. In the end, the class session will be far more productive.  

So how is the program used in a typical day? Vice President of Product John Herbold told USA Today, "In the very beginning of the day, kids come in, they might be jumping out of the bus, they're rambunctious, and the teacher needs to calm them down — so she might do a calming activity. Midway through the day, they may be lethargic and need to wake back up, so she'll pick one that's more intense and uplifting. And then before tests, we've got activities that calm nerves, with deep breathing."