Students come into my class and perform an Instant Activity. I want to get them moving as soon as they walk through the gym doors. My goal is to motivate them to keep moving when they get home. I believe that this project will help with that goal.
We have a great school filled with over 600 fantastic elementary students!
We are doing all we can to give our students opportunities to be active, and they are responding! We have a walking club, a before-school fitness club, a couch to 5K family training program, and 3 family fit nights throughout the school year. The students come out and the parents bring them! There is nothing more fulfilling for a physical education teacher than when the students come up and tell you all the "exercise" that they did on their own.
For the students who aren't able to take part in sports, who don't have transportation to events or who tend to live more sedentary lives, this will be a unique opportunity to be a part of our school "team" as we try to get as many steps as possible.
My Project
All of my students are taught about the importance of an active lifestyle. In 2nd through 4th grade they are introduced to pedometers and the concept of getting 10,000 steps a day. They love wearing the pedometers and seeing how many steps they have taken by the end of class. With this project, I want to allow my 4th grade students to take home a pedometer for a week and record how many steps they take each day. This information will be a tangible way for them to see if they are living an active lifestyle or not.
For a cross-curricular activity, we'll also tally up all the steps for the whole grade, convert it to miles and show on a map how much ground has been covered.
Having a set of pedometers for my 4th grade students to take home for a week will really make the concept of "active lifestyle" come to life.
It won't just be words. They'll see it with their own eyes. If students see that they're only getting 5,000 steps a day, they will know that they need to do more to be active. My hope is that this project will be the motivation for these students to form healthy habits while they are young so that they will stay active as they get older.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Polsz and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.