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Playgrounds, restrooms and names for pupils

31 January 2025

Hey Tappsters!

Welcome to the USA Teacher Tapp blog πŸŽ‰ Week SIXTEEN of tapping! Welcome to all who joined this week!

Share the app with your colleagues and help grow the community. The best link to spread the word is onelink.to/teachertapp – it takes them straight to the app store! πŸ“²βœ¨

Now let’s get into the data…

1. Playground games

The bell goes for recess and the kids pour out onto the playground…but what are they going to play?

Ensuring students are occupied at recess is important for lots of reasons – not least because kids with nothing to do will inevitably find an activity you DO NOT want them doing!

So what’s on offer for kids in the playground?

The majority will have balls to play with (87%) and some sort of climbing equipment is likely to be on offer (64%).

Hopscotch is marked out in lots of playgrounds (59%) and 45% provide jump ropes or elastics.

Schools also permit items to be brought in, like balls (48%) and jump ropes (25%).

All of these games are on offer…but what do your students do at recess? Are they singing “Cinderella dressed in yella…” while jumping rope, or are they shirking traditional games for other activities?

Look out for more questions in the app about this topic!

2. Restrooms

It’s a room EVERYONE has to visit at some point in the day – but they can be surprisingly problematic areas for schools.

Last week, a Teacher Tapp user got in touch to ask about hot and cold taps – in their school hot water was a problem, and she wanted to know how common this problem was.

It turns out – pretty common! Just under half (46%) don’t have hot water at all, and 12% said in their school the hot water was regularly not working!

In England, locked restrooms during lesson times are quite common – but here in the US it’s a small minority with just 8% restricting access to students.

The good news is that 73% agree their restrooms are in good working order, and 60% say they are safe.

This week we were all about the student toilets – but we have more questions to come about faculty toilets!

Do you have a question you would like us to ask? Get in touch and tell us! You can find us on BlueSky and Twitter @TeacherTappUS or contact us via the app by going to Settings and then ‘Contact Us’.

3. What is in a name?

Although we’re sure there are many names you could use to describe your classes (ranging from the complimentary and affectionate to the less-than-complimentary…) usually each school has its own customs when it comes to what to school the young people you teach.

Coming out on top is ‘students’ (76%), by far the most popular answer. Next is ‘kids’ coming in at 18%. Scholars was a less popular option (3%) however this could be because of the number of charter and private school teachers on the app.

Look across the Atlantic and there is a huge difference in the language used! In England, 33% use ‘children’ compared to just 1% here!

Daily Reads

We know lots of teachers on Teacher Tapp LOVE the daily reads, if you have ideas of reads we could feature, get in touch by emailing usa@teachertapp.com and we will check it out!

This week our most-read blog was about decorating classrooms.