End-of-Year Celebration Ideas for Your Mileage Club®: Recognize Student Success & Build Momentum

The end of the school year is almost here! It's the perfect moment to celebrate your students hard work, dedication, and movement milestones through Mileage Club. 

Whether you ran your program in the spring, fall, year-round, or in shorter bursts, a wrap-up celebration reinforces the value of healthy habits and keeps students excited to return next year. 

Below are fresh ideas to make your end-of-year celebration memorable, meaningful, and fun.

Create a Celebration Students Will Remember

Consider hosting a school-wide assembly or outdoor celebration to recognize students publicly for their effort and progress. Public recognition boosts confidence, builds school culture, and motivates students to stay active in the future.

If your school uses hybrid or flexible scheduling, this celebration could also be:

• A morning meeting announcement
• A livestream or recorded video
• A class-by-class walk-through celebration parade

Be sure to also recognize the volunteers, teachers, and family support that helped your Mileage Club run smoothly. A simple thank-you goes a long way. You can also use this time for other end-of-the-year recognition, as well. For example, you could announce Field Day results or celebrate any student successes in the classroom.

Add Excitement with End-of-Season Awards

Toe Tokens are a beloved motivator throughout the season, but the end of the year is a great time to add something extra special!

Fitness Finders offers a variety of awards to match your budget and goals, including:

• Mileage Club® tee shirts
• Sport pack
• Dog tag
• Wristbands
• Pencils

Students love having something tangible that reminds them of their accomplishments and progress. Finding reasons to recognize them won’t be difficult; your students have been working hard!

Celebrate Different Types of Mileage Club Achievements

There are many ways to honor student success, not just mileage totals. Try recognizing:

Outstanding Mileage

Recognize outstanding amounts of accumulated mileage by awarding Mileage Club® T-shirts and dog tags to the top three performing boys and girls.

Consistency & Commitment

Honor students with great participation or attendance records. (We love the saying: “You’ve got to show up to go up!”)

Encouragement & Leadership

Recognize students who help others, organize materials, cheer on their classmates, or demonstrate awesome character. A Sport Pack or Wristband is a great choice for this recognition.

Recognize Goal-Setting Success

Teaching students to set and achieve goals is one of the most powerful parts of Mileage Club®. Celebrate progress at every level:

Individual Goals

Reward all students who meet their personal goals. Walk-a-Long™ Wristbands, or colorful Shoelaces are great options.

Class Goals

If a class meets a collective goal, reward the entire group. Toe Token® Folders, Mileage Cups, or Training Medals work well here.

Tip: Take a class photo and add it to next year’s Mileage Club® bulletin board.

School-Wide Goals

Nothing builds community like a shared mission. If your school reaches a cumulative goal, celebrate together! Economical whole-school awards include:

• Mileage Club® Pencils

• Mood Pencils

• Wristbands

• Feat Awards

• Dog Tags

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Keep the Momentum Going Into Next Year

A year-end celebration is also a great opportunity to:

• Ask students for input (favorite parts? ideas for next year?)

• Recruit volunteers early

• Share your success with families and staff

• Display student progress visuals around the school

You’re building more than a running program — you’re building a school culture of movement, confidence, and joy.

We’re Here to Support You

If you’d like support planning your event or choosing awards, we’re happy to help.

Contact us:
📧 info@fitnessfinders.net
📞 800-789-9255

Congratulations to your students — and to you for leading a program that makes a difference. We can’t wait to partner with you again next year!

Cardiovascular Testing in Physical Education by Charles T. Kuntzleman

Testing in Physical Education

There are four main domains of physical education. These four are: acquisition of motor skills, physical fitness, knowledge (strategies and rules of the game; plus benefits of physical activity, how to learn motor skills and mechanical analysis of movement, to name a few) and physical activity-related personal-social skills (such as best effort, sportsmanship, cooperation and others).

Why test?

Many teachers use testing only to see if their students are making satisfactory progress. Student evaluation is just a small part of the equation, however. In fact, testing primarily concerns you and your curriculum, not only your students.

For starters, testing allows the teacher to tailor-make the curriculum. Simply put, if your students do well in the mile run/walk, but perform motor skills poorly, the instructor should increase the emphasis on teaching a variety of fundamental, object control and rhythm skills. Testing also allows the teacher to design a special program for a student not progressing as desired.

Testing also helps an instructor measure curriculum effectiveness. If the emphasis has been on throwing and catching yet the students do poorly on a throwing and catching test, something is wrong. This tells the instructor that the teaching strategies did not work or that the school does not schedule adequate time for physical education class.

Finally, testing gives motivated students incentive to become physically active.

The above reasons are much more educationally sound than testing only for grades. Viewing testing as an evaluation of teaching, learning, the curriculum and school environment is a much healthier and more holistic approach to assessment.

Cardiovascular Testing in Schools

Aerobic fitness refers to the ability of the body to pick up oxygen, transport it through the body and have the body use it. Currently, several cardiorespiratory tests are used to measure the aerobic fitness levels of youth in America's schools. Here is an evaluation of five of the more popular aerobic tests.

Mile Run/Walk

Tests cardiorespiratory fitness levels by having students run (jog or walk if necessary) one mile as fast as possible.

Equipment
A one-mile course, one stopwatch and a score card and pencil for each student.

Pros

• Very simple to give. 
• Distance long enough to determine aerobic power rather than speed. 

Cons

• Could be a bit longer. Students can often "gut" it out, making it a test of motivation rather than fitness. 
• Kids can see where they finished, causing poorly performing students embarrassment. 
• Often hard to motivate students to perform to their ability level. 

600-Yard Run/Walk

Supposedly tests cardiorespiratory fitness levels by having students cover 600 yards as fast as possible. It is one of the weakest cardiovascular tests summarized here.

Equipment
A 600-yard course, one stopwatch and a score card and pencil for each student.

Pros

• Short. 
• Simple to deliver after the course is laid out. 
• Good for young students, Grades 1-3 

Cons

• Tests speed rather than aerobic power. 
• Often difficult to lay out a course which is 600 yards long. 

Pacer (Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Run

Students run for as long as possible between two marked lines set at 20 meters apart. They navigate the distance between two marked lines, keeping pace with a series of beeps. Students can miss two beeps before they are stopped. Score is determined by how many laps a student can do.


Equipment

A tape player, a PACER cassette tape, marker cones, lines measured 20 meters apart and a score card and pencil for each student.

Pros

• Easily done indoors. 
• Most like the treadmill test with its progressively building tempo. 

Cons

• Requires more equipment than most other tests. 
• Often difficult for students to learn. 
• Can only test a few students at a time. 

20-Minute Run

Tests cardiorespiratory fitness levels by having students run as far as possible in 20 minutes.


Equipment
A running course, one stopwatch and a score card and pencil for each student.

Pros

• Very simple. 
• Students not compared to others to the same extent as in the mile run/walk and the 600-yard run/walk. 
• Long enough to test aerobic power rather than speed. 

Cons

• The length of the test often scares students. 
• Difficult to determine distance covered. 

Step Test 

Tests cardiorespiratory fitness by having the student take 24 steps per minute for three minutes in an "up, up, down, down" pattern and then count his or her heart rate for one minute. Along with the 600-yard run/walk, it is one of the weakest cardiovascular tests.


Equipment
A bench 12 inches in height, metronome set at 96 beats per minute, a stopwatch, a stethoscope (carotid pulse can also be used).

Pros

• Pulse recovery rather than a performance test. 
• Shorter. 
• Students not visually compared to anyone else (usually). 

Cons

• Depends too heavily on people's pulse rates. Natural differences can change results. 
• Some students cannot keep pace.

Discover How Fitness Finders® Can Help Tame Your Classroom!

This Fall 2017, Fitness Finders® is thrilled to introduce Zooper Safari™, a new classroom management program that educates and motivates students toward positive classroom behavior! The Zooper Safari™ curriculum pairs up-

     · 7 Zooper Behaviors
     · 7 Featured Creatures
     · 7 Different Continents

Zooper Safari™ appeals to childrens’ natural curiosity and love of animals. It actively engages kids by using a variety of lessons and reinforcement activities to connect students to the Featured Creature that displays the desired Zooper Behavior of each lesson. Students are then encouraged to transfer the Zooper Behavior to themselves. Zooper Safari™ also meets many Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Common Core Language Art Standards (CCSS), which are listed in each lesson.

Zooper Safari™ emphasizes the following important Zooper Behaviors:

Zooper Behavior	Featured Creature/Continent
1. Have a Positive Attitude	1. Sulcata Tortoise - Africa
2. Stays on Task	2. Beaver - North America
3. Listen and Follow Instructions	3. Lipizzaner - Europe
4. Take Initiative	4. Tiger – Asia
5. Put Things in Order	5. Gentoo Penguin - Antarctica
6. Think of Others	6. Koala - Australia
7. Work with Others	7. Alpaca - South America

   

Don’t just take our word for it! We asked teachers to test Zooper Safari™ in their classrooms from Kindergarten through 4^th grade. Here’s what they said:

“The Zooper Safari™ program was a great way for my students to learn the behaviors necessary for our class to learn, have fun, and be safe on all of our kindergarten adventures.”  

– Chris

“One day a student started complaining about something and another student pointed out to him that they were just learning about not whining or complaining.” 

– Cindy

“I like saying-I want to see Beaver Behavior- and the kids will look over to the map and remember ‘Stay on Focus.’ That was the first one we learned and really seemed to impact them the most. They also will tell each other to ‘Stay on Focus’ when someone is getting off topic.” 

– Allison

“During the week that we worked on ‘Positive attitude’, I noticed less complaining in the classroom. Students who would usually tell me that something is too hard would instead ask for help to complete an assignment. When we worked on the ‘Stay on Task’ behavior, I noticed students staying on task more and completing their assignments faster. When students were off task, I could refer to the beaver and remind them of their goal to show on task behavior.” 

– Rebecca

Zooper Safari™ teaches foundational life and classroom behavior skills that will enable students to be successful now and in the future. Tame your classroom this year and fulfill your dream to have engaged, well-behaved, and interested students with Zooper Safari™!