Extra-curricular stretching classes as an element of health-care system for 5th grade students

Statement of the problem. It is believed that primary school students experience stress when moving to the next level of education. Fifth-graders are worried about the following social phenomena: new teachers and subjects, an increase in the amount of homework and transitions from one classroom to another [Eroshkina et al., 2024]. Besides, at 10-12, physiological changes occur in the body, expressed in a constant change of emotions and manifestations of impulsiveness in behavior [Kaligin et al., 2021]. Thus, changes in the environment of the educational process and transition to the stage of ‘early adolescence’ cause nervous tension in the body, which is reflected in the health of fifth-graders [Eroshkina et al., 2024]. The purpose of the article is to identify and justify the need to introduce extracurricular stretching classes for fifth-graders in general education institutions to maintain the health of students and ensure their successful adaptation to basic school. Methodology (materials and methods). It consists of analysis of scientific and methodological literature, a pedagogical experiment, control testing, methods for assessing the state of the autonomic nervous system and the cardiovascular system using the VNS-MICRO hardware complex, and a method of statistical data processing. Research results. The study involved 20 girls from the 5th grade of secondary school No. 45. The study revealed that during the five-month pedagogical experiment, the experimental group improved its results in: leaning forward while standing on a gym bench by 82.62 %; gymnastic bridge by 58.67 %; longitudinal split with the right leg by 59.17 %; longitudinal split with the left leg by 69.26 %; HR by 11.2 %; SI by 5.77 %; %LF by 18.16 %; %HF by 3.01 %; %VLF by 28.03 %. Conclusion. After the pedagogical experiment, the indicators of both groups increased, but the experimental group demonstrated higher results. This fact is related to the fact that the control group attended physical education lessons twice a week, and the experimental group, in addition to two physical education lessons per week, did stretching twice a week as part of extracurricular activities.