Keep on Moving!
Objectives
* To encourage students to participate in physical activity.
* To help students realize that physical activity is not limited to playing on sports teams or doing strenuous exercise.
Prepare students for this activity by asking all those who did some form of exercise/physical activity yesterday to raise their hands. Encourage students to share the types of activity they did. Then explain that today they are going to take a new look at exercise as they complete the activities on the worksheet.
Answer Key
Follow-up Activities
1. To show students the connection between exercise and burning calories, have an exercise marathon. Assign students to an activity in the marathon such as shooting hoops, Frisbee toss, jumping rope or running. Take the class to the gym or outside and group students according to their assigned activity. Begin the marathon by blowing a whistle. After five minutes, blow the whistle again and have groups advance to the next activity. Repeat until all groups have completed all the activities. Then have students check the number of calories they burned by going to the Calorie/Activity Calculator.
2. Help students who tend to be less active at recess. Be sure to have equipment for several activities available such as balls, jump ropes, Frisbees, etc. Also give students time to organize teams and plans for group play before recess so they have more time to actually play. For students who tend to be less active, you might suggest that they estimate the time it takes them to walk from the cafeteria to the playground or how long it takes them to walk around the perimeter of the playground. Again, students can check the calories burned during these activities at the Calorie/Activity Calculator.
3. Divide the class into groups to create posters that depict novel ways to keep physically active. They can begin with the activities they created in Part 2 of the worksheet. Then you can display the posters throughout the school as an incentive for other students to be more active.
