Putting the Fun back into Fitness - The Nuts & Bolts of the Fitness Unit

If you've read previous posts you will already know that I don't particularly agree with fitness testing in Elementary School. (Link Here to Fitness Testing in Primary Schools - YES or NO?)

For Grade 5 we overlapped the Athletics Unit (an intro to Track & Field) with the Fitness Unit in order to introduce the students to a wide range of the components of fitness (health and skill).

For the lower Grades we focus six lessons (three cycles) on cherry picking the components of fitness that we feel appropriate for the specific age groups.

In this post I am not going to go into depth into the Athletics unit (Grade 5), but the events covered within that unit will help highlight where certain components of fitness fit across the two units.

Grade 5 Athletics (Intro. to Track & Field)

Athletics Unit 2018
Lesson 1: Into. to Sprinting
Lesson 2: Sprinting
Lesson 3: Intro. to Middle Distance 1500m
Lesson 4: Middle Distance 1500m
Lesson 5: Intro. to Long Jump
Lesson 6: Long Jump
Lesson 7: Intro. to High Jump
Lesson 8: High Jump
Lesson 9: Javelin

A constant theme throughout this unit are the components of fitness, particularly:
Health: cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance, strength and
Skills: agility, balance, coordination, reactions, rhythm, power and speed.

Added onto the Athletics Unit for the Grade 5s are the following lessons, which make up the Fitness Units for the younger Grade groups.

Fitness Unit 2018
Lesson 1: Intro. to three new bodyweight exercises through a tag game. Followed up by Fitness Prisoner Dodgeball.
Lesson 2: Intro. to three new bodyweight exercises through a tag game. Followed up by Fitness Prisoner Dodgeball.
Lesson 3: 'Old School' (warm up), one partner circuit. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 4: 'Old School' (warm up), one partner circuit. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 5: Interval training via a timed tag game. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 6: Interval training via a timed tag game. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.

The breakdown of lessons 1 and 2 introduces 6 bodyweight exercises over the course of two lessons.  This is achieved by playing 'everyone is it' tag or the fast tag in the world. Each time someone is tagged they perform 5-6 repetitions of the exercise we are learning about. The game is repeated three times introducing the three exercises. A lot of emphasis is place on form and doing the exercise right.

The first three exercise were the Star jump, Mountain Climbers and the Burpee.

Each exercise was taped to a board so they could be stood up around the gym.

The second half of those lessons is devoted to a game the students really have a lot of fun playing. With prisoner dodgeball when the students are hit or if they get caught, they go to the side and perform one of the exercises introduced that lesson. Once they have completed the exercise they make their way to prison and the game continues.  Each time they head to the side to do an exercise they are advised to rotate through the three and if they get hit a fourth time they start back with their first exercise.

By the time the students get to lessons 3 and 4 they know their six new exercises really well. After an 'old school' warm up, as a class we run some shuttles, the students break in to pairs and make their way clockwise round the gym doing their new circuit. Rep. ranges for the easier exercises are 20 and for the harder exercises 10.

For the second half of the lesson we play a fun game of the students choice, usually dodgeball or Yoshi.

In lessons 5 and 6 we play a tag game as part of the fitness element of the unit. The tag game introduces interval training. I don't know what the tag game is called, but I will attempt to describe it below.

Interval Tag Game.
The game is divided into 10 rounds.
Each round is 30 seconds long or each round gets progressively longer by 3-5 seconds.
Mr. Weston starts off as the sole tagger, carrying 4 mini noodles.
In the first 30 seconds I have to tag 4 students.

Once round 1 is over, if the students have not been a tagger or have not been tagged they receive a lollypop stick e.g. if they have successfully evaded the taggers that round they get a lollypop stick.

After the first round, if the students do get tagged they have to surrender their all their lollypop sticks to the tagger. You can not get tagged back within that round.

After 10 rounds we have a quick show of hands regarding who has how many lolly sticks.

Another possible timing opportunity would be to pyramid the times e.g. start at 30 seconds, increase by 5secs until you get halfway through the rounds and then start decreasing the time back to 30 again.

Again the second half of the lesson is devoted to a popular student game, Dodgeball or Yoshi.

That's it for a rough nuts and bolts for elementary fitness.

Orienteering Revisited '18

This is a post that is based on the reflections on last years Orienteering unit and how I organised the unit this year.

Lesson Order:
1. Introduction to basic maps and map drawing (find your partners lolly pop stick)
2. Micro Orienteering
3. Marco Orienteering (Flags of the world pt. 1)
4. Marco Orienteering (Flags of the world pt. 2)
Future Lessons:
5 & 6. Clue based Orienteering

Last year I started with Micro Orienteering follow up with Map Drawing (Hunt the lolly stick) Orienteering. As you can see this year I reversed the two lessons.

Reasons for this were I felt the students need to get to understand the basics of map reading, and the Micro Orienteering lesson didn't really answer all their questions.

Having them look at maps first and then produce a simple map on a personal white board of the gym with bits of equipment scattered round it seemed the more logical path to take. The practical part of the lesson had the students draw a plan of the gym (plus equipment) and then in pairs one would hide their partners lolly stick, mark it on the map with a circle and then have them try and find it.
A link to how to play this game can be found here.

Once the students have kinda got their heads around the idea of drawing and looking at a plan of the gym the next lesson: Micro Orienteering is much more plain sailing. In this lesson the idea of orientating yourself to the map is really important. It should be noted here, to save time and to lay the course, I had to produce the map for the class and photocopy it accordingly. Alternatively, if I have the time I would let the students copy the map onto their own white boards and to mark on the circles... I'm guessing that would produce some interesting results (and maps!).
A link to how to play this game can be found here.

Lessons 3 and 4: Macro Orienteering is conducted in an area of the schools ground, including outside basketball courts, a covered play area, the cafeteria, the gym and the football field.

I made up 40 cards with 20 flags (each flag had a double). With one set of flags I gave a number and with their double I gave a letter e.g. The Flag of France, one card is S and the other is 72.
To add a bit of technology into the mix I had the cards made up as QR codes (our G3's have individual iPads).

Before the lesson I place 20 cards (10 flags) around the area mapped, each location marked with a circle.

The objective is for the students to work in pairs to locate, find and record each card found and to match up the flag codes.

This is repeated for the 4th lesson, but with a varied map and the other 10 flags.

Below is one of the maps and keys for the flags that I used this year.

In the future I would like to try as the final lesson a clue based orienteering course. I'm not 100% sure what it will look like, but I like the idea of getting the students critically thinking their way to the next clue etc.