Helping Your Students Own Their Daily Exercise Programme Key Ideas Running and walking are an important part of the daily fitness and exercise programme. For long term benefits, aim for the students to walk, jog or run for 15 minutes a day. Students must feel 'they own' the daily programme. This means they must have a hand in planning and organisation. They must also know the benefits. First Steps Invite a health nurse/doctor/representative of your Regional Sports Trust to talk to the class about the benefits of regular exercise, with special emphasis on running and jogging. Involve groups in planning an 'interesting' circuit around the school. Make it interesting by involving all the features of the school such as: adventure playground, grass, court areas, through trees, up slopes, using playground markings etc. Each group draws a map and marks out their circuit and then walks the class around it. Using the Circuit Use a diffent group's circuit every three days or week. Have groups decide at what parts of the circuit particpants will walk, jog, run and sprint. Have groups plan activities to be carried out at different stations on the circuit eg. 5 knee bends at the fence, overhead stretching at the adventure playground, run and weave between some trees, bounce 20 times on the spot etc. Further Incentives Pupils work in pairs. Have students design a series of graduated awards, eg award one after 10 circuits completed, award two after 25 circuits completed etc Measure distance of each circuit with trundle wheel. Have each student write down accumulated distances on personal or class chart. Tally class distances and have them used on a 'walk' around the South Island. Mark the distances on road maps. This can be a class challenge or group challenge. See where we meet! Half the class starts at the North Cape, the other half starts at Bluff. Follow State Highway One. Where do we meet? What towns do we pass through? Design promotional fitness posters and talks to encourage other classes to carry out the programme. Give regular reports and assembly. Do you have a lesson you would like to share with other teachers? Simply email us an attached Word, Works or PDF file and we will add it to our library. Don't forget to include your name and school so we can acknowledge your work. Click on the email icon below.