Celebrate Students' Mileage Club® Accomplishments!

The end of the school year is almost here! Yay! Now is a great time to plan an awesome Mileage Club® celebration. Whether your program is in the Spring, Fall, or both - you have the opportunity to give a final hurrah to another successful year of fun, hard work, and achieving goals.

Here are some ideas to make your Mileage Club® celebration extra special.

Soup Up the Setting

We suggest organizing a schoolwide assembly to cap off Mileage Club® for the year. Public recognition is a fantastic way to motivate students for future years and it will mean the world to them to be recognized in front of their peers. 

Go all out, and utilize available resources such as the sound system, lighting, and stage. This is also a great time to recognize and thank any teachers or parents who volunteered to make Mileage Club® successful throughout the school year!

We think it’s important to take advantage of any opportunity to remind students that exercise and being active go hand-in-hand with academics! 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.

Amp Up the Awards

Toe Tokens® is an excellent and proven motivator throughout the season, but how about some fresh awards to end the school year on a high note? We have an amazing assortment of awards to choose from: Mileage Club® tee shirts, water bottles, sports packs, dog tags, wristbands, pencils, baseball caps, and more.

Finding reasons to recognize won’t be difficult; your students have been working hard!

Outstanding Mileage Club® Achievements

Outstanding achievements can be awarded to exceptional participants who go above and beyond – in a variety of areas:

• Recognize outstanding amounts of accumulated mileage by awarding Mileage Club® T-shirts and Baseball Caps to the top three performing boys and girls.
• Recognize outstanding consistency by awarding the student with the best Mileage Club® attendance record with a Mileage Club® Sport Bottle. “You’ve gotta show up to go up!”
• Recognize outstanding selflessness by awarding a Mileage Club® Sport Pack to the students who volunteer to help keep Mileage Club® on track or who always have an encouraging word to say to their peers.

Goals Met

The process of setting a goal and working hard to achieve it without giving up is an important life skill that will benefit your students for their whole lives. Depending on your program, goals might have a large or small scope:

• Individual Goal

Award all students who meet their goal. Your enthusiasm, encouragement, and recognition will inspire them to come back next year and shoot even higher! Great rewards for meeting individual goals include a pair of colorful Shoelaces, Walk-a-Long™ Wristbands, or Water Bottles.

• Class Goal

If the whole class sets and meets a season goal, then everyone gets an award! Popular class rewards include Toe Token® Folders, Mileage Cups, and Mileage Club® Training Medals. Be sure to take a picture of the class to put on the Mileage Club® bulletin board for next year!

• School Goal

A school goal can be a great way to motivate all students to participate. If the goal is met, each participant gets to partake in the excitement and recognition. Students who didn’t join in this year will definitely want to run next year and be a part of the team! Fun, yet economical school-wide awards include Mileage Club® Pencils or Mood Pencils, Mileage Club® Wristbands, Mileage Club® Feat awards, or Mileage Club® Dog Tags.

We hope these ideas are helpful. 

If you have any questions or would like to discuss your school’s specific needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@fitnessfinders.net or 800-789-9255. 

We hope you have a great end-of-the-year celebration. 

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™!