MSU Extension Food & Health

Hi! I'm Miss Chavez and I teach third grade. I just learned about a handwashing technique I can use in my classroom. It's called high-speed handwashing. Hmmm... I wonder how effective it is? Let's take a look! First, Let's see how traditional handwashing works... Traditional handwashing with a line of ten kids: Each child makes one trip to the sink. Each child applies soap, scrubs, rinses and dries. The elapsed time was 2 minutes and 3 seconds and the average scrubbing time was 6 seconds. Two minutes for ten kids is pretty quick! But scrubbing for less than 10 seconds isn't ideal. Let's see how high-speed handwashing compares... High-speed handwashing with a line of ten kids: Each child makes two trips to the sink. Each child wets hands and applies soap, then moves to the back of the line to scrub. Each child returns to the sink to rinse and dry. The elapsed time was 2 minutes and 7 seconds and the average scrubbing time was 89 seconds. That took the same amount of time - 2 minutes! But the kids scrubbed for more than a minute. That's much better! Let's compare. Traditional handwashing had an elapsed time of 2 minutes and 3 seconds and an average scrubbing time of 6 seconds. High-speed handwashing had an elapsed time of 2 minutes and 7 seconds and an average scrubbing time of 89 seconds. I definitely like the longer scrubbing time!