Fitness Testing

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596/project1/fitness.html

Unit Authors

This unit was developed by Cindy Feeney and the teachers of family A and delivered to 7th and 8th graders at O'Farrell Community School in several forms over the last three years.

Content Areas

This unit takes off in P.E. and can be implemented in math, health and science.

Organizing Theme

Fitness testing is the end result of what students accomplish in P.E. The figures can be used in math. Science and health will take the math figures and the theory of fitness into concideration.

Implementation

This unit was organized by Family A leader Cindy Feeney. It involved all five groups of Family A students. At this time only Family A has attempted this unit. This unit takes approximately four weeks. It is an interdiscplinary unit.

Outline of Activities

The first week takes place in P.E.. This is where the students do all of the physical work and record their scores for the five testing events. There is the mile, sit and reach, sit-ups, pull-ups and the shuttle run. The second week, the figures are given to the math class. Here the students will be introduced to mean, mode and median as well as review the concept of the "average". The third week the scores will be given to the science class. Here the students will use the scores, along with what they already know about energy expenditure and caloric intake and burning, to find out how much energy, calories, was burned. The students can then figure out what amount if any weight was lost. This part of the unit will also require that the students keep a diary of what the student ate during the week of the fitness testing.

Student Products

For the most part this has motivated students to work harder in P.E.. They have realized they are taking in more energy than they are expending. Student have set goals to try to burn more calories than they take in. Some students have gone on to keep daily logs of their caloric in take and daily exercise.

Thinking Skills Engaged

This unit involved comparison as well as creative problem-solving. The students were required to compare all of their scores to find out their mean, mode and averages. The students who went on to implement this into their daily lives are able to compare the amount of energy burned now, to the amount of energy they burned the first week of this prodject. Creative problem solving was use when students had to figure out what they needed to do if they were taking in more energy than they were using. Do they eat less or exercise more? Lessons Learned This has worked well for the last three years. It helps motivate the students to improve their scores as well as their fitness level. It really brought out the best in the students. When they realized that the students with low scores were bringing down the whole families average, students really started motivating each other.
This description was written by Cheryl Rodenhi. Last updated on March 6, 1996.
Return to the Index of Example Units Page