Mileage Club hits 250,000 miles!

Listen to Amy Nieuwenhuis (Teacher and Mileage Club Leader) tell us about her Mileage Club reaching a huge Milestone.

Meeting SHAPE Distance Learning Guidelines

We have selected a handful of action points from the SHAPE Distance Learning Guidelines on the left and show how Fitness Finders can help you meet them on the right.

Curriculum

“Continually assess and revise online course to keep up with trends, technology, and content.”

Fitness Finders does this for you! Our EZ Scan® app automatically updates at no extra cost and works with the latest devices. Content changes are based on current trends in physical education and feedback from users in all 50 states.

“Address all state and/or national physical education content standards, including any other required standards (Common Core, ELA, Technology, etc.).”

Getting the recommended 60 minutes of activity a day is no problem with Mileage Club®. Mileage Club works before, during, or after school. It can be done outdoors, indoors, and even at home. And it’s an easy, low-cost way to get and keep kids moving. Mileage Club is flexible, accommodates all students, and kids love the rewards. It is the best way to meet multiple state and national standards for physical activity.

Learning Environment

“Get parents involved with their child’s learning.”	Parents can be involved in Mileage Club in many ways! From simple encouragement as children reach their goals to walking laps with them. Parents can be there for their kids every step of the way! With EZ Scan, teachers can share their child’s individual reports with parents to keep them up-to-date on progress. For greater involvement, teachers can send the EZ Scan Activity Recording Sheet & Instruction or a QR Card with instructions home to parents.
“Allow for student choice so students can choose where, when, and how to be physically active.”	Flexibility is a critical component of Mileage Club® and EZ Scan®. Complete laps any time of day - anywhere! Set a course anywhere you’d like and record laps, reps, and minutes of activity – anyway, they can be done! A great resource we offer is our EZ Scan Activity Recording Sheet & Instruction has the equivalency chart with the purpose of allowing the choice of exercise by converting any activity to minutes of walking/running. Available online or by mail.
“Balance screen time and physical activity time.”	With EZ Scan®, you can access reports that give time stamps and quickly let you see the amount of time spent walking/running!

Assessment

“Utilize technology to verify participation and support learning gains in physical activity to meet the CDC physical activity recommendations of 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous physical activity per day.”

As mentioned before - EZ Scan® will do this job for you! Just have the students scan their laps or minutes of activity. You’ll be able to generate reports with all of the information needed to know if students are getting their 60 minutes of exercise per day.

Standards-Based Instruction

“Students compare and contrast data collected (e.g., heart rate, video of the performance) against criteria and/or previous analyses.”	EZ Scan reports can be generated in any time frame that you’d like. So, comparing results from day-to-day or week-to-week will be a breeze. As an account administrator, you will just need to send them the data, such as the individual student report and timed run reports. Both of these would allow students to compare and contrast their progress over time.
“Students generate data (e.g., heart rate, number of sit-ups, etc.) by performing health-related physical fitness assessments.”	Let EZ Scan make your timed run very EZ. Students simply scan a QR card with each completed lap. The report details the # of laps, total time, and splits for each student.
“Students choose, present and/or discuss relevant assessments to measure a physical fitness component (e.g., muscular strength, agility, coordination)”	EZ Scan reports provide relevant metrics related to distance and frequency as well as progress overtime. Also, equivalencies give a great framework for time-based, calorie-based, and distance-based comparisons.

More Takeaways!

“One of the four essential components of physical education is assessment — the gathering of evidence about student achievement in all areas of instruction to make inferences about student progress.”	An assessment has never been such a quick task! The reports generated from an EZ Scan account can give you all the data you need to present to students, parents, and administration showing off how much they have accomplished in your run club in a given timeframe. One great example is the Timed Run reports.
“Activity tracker - Activity trackers are wearable devices or computer applications that record daily physical activity along with other data relating to fitness or health, such as heart rate, the number of steps taken, or even calories burned.”	EZ Scan is the #1 lap tracking software on the market. Not to mention it is affordable – only $149.95/year and handles up to 1,500 students! Plus, if you ever need help, we offer free tech support Mon-Fri during our office hours.
“Verification of learning is perhaps one of the teachers’ biggest concerns with OLPE (Daum & Buscher, 2012; Trent 2016), while students struggle with the meaningfulness and challenge of assignments. Creators of online courses need to pay special attention to meaningful assessments that challenge students in real-world contexts.”	Verify that your students are learning by allowing them to complete the same exercises at school as they will at home. This can quickly be done with Mileage Club and equivalencies because, as we’ve mentioned, they can be completed anytime, anywhere, to give your students real-world context through independent work! When you choose to start a Mileage Club, it will be the last curriculum choice you have to make for incorporating structured physical activity. Mileage Club is so simple that you will only need to teach the lesson once. After that, students know to get their QR Scan card and scan as they complete laps to earn their awards. No more worrying about coming up with new lesson plans on the fly.
“All students must be afforded the same opportunities to participate in public school programs. The students must be provided accommodations and modifications as necessary, based on the individualized education program (IEP) team decisions.”	Mileage Club can be done by anyone, anywhere, any time of the day and our equivalencies make this even more true as they can turn any activity into minutes walked/ran, such as pushups if they are unable to go outside. You can accommodate all interests and abilities.
“Teachers must make more of a concerted effort to connect when in a distance learning environment. Students need to feel like part of their school community and that they are cared for to learn. Develop strategies to connect with students if your school/ district will not be facilitating online learning or if students will not be able to meet online due to limited accessibility at home (e.g., create assignments focused on getting to know each other, facilitate pen pals).”	Connect with students by achieving personal and group goals together! Start a Mileage Club program and keep track of their awards and data with EZ Scan. You can do this for one school, or connect your entire district! Plus, they will be able to participate in the same program from home or at school. When they have reached their goals, be sure to give them a physical reminder of their success, such as a Toe Token and a necklace to display it on.

Bonus Thoughts from Fitness Finders

“Do an inventory of your current curriculum and determine which lessons or activities can be repurposed as at-home work or for online use (depending on students’ access to technology). There may be lessons or activities within your current curriculum that can easily be adapted for students to complete at home or online.”	Mileage Club seamlessly adapts to a home learning setting. With EZ Scan, you just make sure your students have their QR card and can log in, and they can get moving. Parents are also able to help out by becoming scanners and supervisors. As an administrator, you can securely give parents access to EZ Scan to allow students to use the same software to complete laps like they would at school.
“Make sure expectations are realistic for students, especially for younger students if they require assistance from an adult to complete assignments. Consider the home dynamics of your students as referenced earlier in the section on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.”	Setting realistic expectations to be met from home can be a tough job. However, EZ Scan and Mileage club make this easy! Mileage Club can be done by anyone at any time. If they’re unable to complete laps, just have them use the equivalency chart. If they can complete laps, have them use EZ Scan to record their data. If they can’t use EZ Scan, just have them send you a recording sheet that you can manually enter into the system. Because EZ Scan is so simple and because we have you covered for all situations, you can expect all of your students to get the proper amount of activity at home without making it unrealistic.
“Can special events or activities still be done remotely (e.g., At-Home Family Field Day)?”	Mileage Club creates consistency because it can be done both at school and at home. So, if the time comes where you have a shift to online learning, your curriculum is already setup, and the students know exactly what to do! The program can be done at the same time each day, and completing laps for mileage is a consistent activity by nature as each can be done the same way each time. Special events and activities can still be done at home, just like at school. Host field days, award days, jog-a-thons, or even just daily sessions remotely with ease. This allows you to maintain critical ESL components of teaching and will give your students structured activities that can be done when they are away from school. This is also true even if some students are learning from home while some are in class.

Build Community with School Fun Runs

Have you considered organizing a Fun Run for your school? These events build community spirit, enhance physical activity, and can even serve as school fundraisers.

Fun Runs are completely customizable to fit the needs of each school. You may choose to limit participation to only students. Or you may choose to have students, parents, and school faculty lace up their running shoes together. You can let participants walk, run, jog, or grapevine during Fun Runs – you’re limited only by imagination! Fun Runs can be themed, competitive 5k events, or shorter, more collaborative Mile Runs.

Webster Central School District in Webster, NY has been hosting an annual Fun Run for over 50 years. According to www.democratandchronicle.com, the annual Webster Fun Run has become tradition, as well as a rite of passage, for the students of their community.

Kevin Sayers, physical education teacher at Plank Road North Elementary, has coordinated the event for the past decade. The mile run kick-starts the academic year by bringing 700 students together. “The idea is to encourage children to be active, how to be a competitor and spectator, and to encourage good sportsmanship, empathy, and camaraderie among students,” Sayers said.

According to www.democratandchronicle.com (Part of the USA Today network),  “The annual (Webster Fun Run, in Webster, NY), in its 52nd year, is as much a tradition among Webster Central School District students as it is a rite of passage.  

Another veteran of Fun Runs, Stacey Brickman from West Bloomfield Hills, MI has organized several elementary and middle school Fun Run events. “A successful fun run accomplishes all the things a PTO tries to create all year. It builds school spirit, increases participation, raises school pride, and is a fabulous, fun whole-school event,” Stacey said. “We would have a fun run even if it didn’t raise money because it is a blast.” www.ptotoday.com

How can you get started with school Fun Runs? 

Fitness Finders® offers a Challenge Series® program that provides easy to implement fun-run templates and awards.

The Challenge Series® is a youth running or walking program combined with imaginative monthly events and accompanying awards. The Series may be conducted as often as once a month, for nine months, just once a year or any number in between. The monthly challenges may be held during physical education classes, after school, at recess, as an active assembly, at a club/recreation setting, as a community Fun Run or part of an established community-wide run. The challenges permit young people to participate in a one-half to one mile run/walk or, on occasion, longer distances.

With the Challenge Series®, participation and completion are the focus and are rewarded. Everyone is a winner! Upon completing the specified distance, each young person receives a special award for the event. For example, a pumpkin is awarded for an October Pumpkin Run or a shamrock is provided for a March Shamrock Shuffle.

The Challenge Series is a powerful, event-driven activity that encourages young people to set a goal of walking/running a specified distance. But how could a Challenge Series® Fun Run serve as a school fundraiser?

We recommend organizing a Challenge Series® event monthly, with the September/October Fun Run functioning as a kick-off fundraiser, and the final Challenge Series® event in May as an End-of-the-Year fundraiser. Both of these Fun Runs could be opened to the public, and we recommend charging a moderate registration fee. Make sure you advertise these events as fundraisers, and if possible, specify your intended use for the money to generate excitement. Make it a fun, whole-school, community-wide affair!

You can also raise money by having people pledge dollar amounts per lap (or steps or miles), or you can have your Fun Run be part of a larger, carnival-type event that has a variety of onsite fundraising games and goodies to purchase. You are in charge, so your Fun Run can be anything you need it to be. But all Fun Runs are great at promoting physical activity and creating community spirit.

We would love to answer any questions you might have regarding Challenge Series® fun-runs and pricing. Please don’t hesitate to call 800-789-9255 or email kellie@fitnessfinders.net for more information. Fitness Finders, Inc. is committed to Shaping America's Future® by providing effective motivational programs and awards designed to develop the body, mind and character of youth. We strive to provide practical and innovative solutions for physical educators, teachers and youth leaders.