Workout of the Week

Woman With White Sunvisor Running

Workout of the Week

Back when I was teaching at Gilman, each week I would have a Workout of the Week posted in the corner of the whiteboard in my gym for my K-4th grade students. This workout consists of 3 different exercises each week that I encouraged the the students to do at home each night after school or in the morning when they wake up. At the beginning of class on Monday I would go over all of the exercises with my students, as well as discuss which parts of their body the exercises make stronger (upper, lower, core, heart). For my 3rd and 4th graders we also discussed which specific muscle groups are being targeted (biceps, triceps, pectorals, quadriceps, calves, etc.). In addition to being discussed at the beginning of class I would also send out the workout to all of the elementary teachers on Friday so they can put it in the newsletter for the following week. This allowed me to not only encourage my students to do the exercises, but also to try and get their parents to exercise with them.

At ICS I run the workout of the week differently. Since at ICS I only see my students twice during a 6 day cycle doing a new workout every week didn't really make sense. Instead I chose to do a Workout of the Month and simply change the workout at the beginning of each new Month. Because the time period is longer I also send a workout log home with students so their parents can observe and check off how many times they do the workout in a month if they want to.

In addition to using the Workout of the Week to encourage kids to exercise outside of school, I also use it regularly in my general PE classes. Sometimes we will do the Workout of the Week as a warm up before class, or as a part of various group games. For example, if I'm doing an activity where students are working on their eye foot coordination by attempting to dribble a soccer ball around obstacles or avoiding other students, if a student happens to accidentally bumps into an obstacle or another students ball they would need to go to the perimeter of the gym and do one of the exercises from the Workout of the Week before they go back in. I also use the Workout of the Week a lot in tag games. For instance, instead of playing regular freeze tag I might play fitness tag, where if they are tagged they need to go do one of the exercises before they come back in.


Comments

Popular Posts