Donors Choose Funds Southdown PE Initiative
It’s the goal of every physical education everywhere: Motivate every student in every class to get up and start moving. Southdown Primary School teachers Adam Sherrard and Lynn Hefele are no different. They want every youngster participating all of the time.
Mr. Sherrard and Mrs. Hefele come up with new ideas all the time to make classes more interesting. The duo attends conferences and brainstorms with fellow teachers near and far. They are always on the lookout for novel ways to get kids moving and learning.
A common theme through many successful Southdown physical education lessons is a connection to technology. Principal Scott Oshrin is fully supportive of incorporating technology into the curriculum in the gym and students love it, too.
To help motivate students to be active at Southdown, Mr. Sherrard posted a project on www.donorschoose.org. Titled “Reaching Goals One STEP at a Time,” the project involved a request for 30 Garmin Vivofit fitness tracker bands. “That’s enough for an entire class of students,” the teacher said.
The $2,000 project was fully funded by the Sonic restaurant chain. “The students at Southdown are able to use these fitness trackers to help promote an active and healthy lifestyle,” Mr. Sherrard said. “The students from each class are assigned a specific fitness tracker. Each day when they enter the gymnasium they are given their assigned tracker. They are able to track the number of steps they take during each physical education class.”
Mr. Sherrard and Mrs. Hefele give the students total step goals to try to reach for specific activities. “Rewards are given out to individuals who reach certain goals as well as entire class rewards for classes that are able to have the largest number of total steps,” Mr. Sherrard said.
Southdown students have learned that about 10,000 daily steps and about an hour of moderate to vigorous daily activity is needed to keep their bodies healthy. The school community has also learned about the academic, health and emotional benefits of “working out your heart.”
“With the Garmin fitness trackers, the students are able to track their daily steps, record their heart rate and record the length of time they are exercising,” Mr. Sherrard said. “This is just one of many steps that the students have taken to become ‘Southdown Strong.’”