• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Teachers Get Kids Moving: State to Require 30 Minutes of Exercise in Schools a Day

Posted on: Saturday, 18 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By Brandee Hayhurst, Times-News, Burlington, N.C.

Feb. 18--Think morning calisthenics, but for kids. Rhonda Rogers' drowsy kindergarten students walk into class at Sylvan Elementary and go over the letters of the alphabet. Then she calls them into action. "All right, you guys ready?" Rogers cries, turning up the Rocky theme song on her boom box. "Yes!" her students shout back, bouncing and punching the air. The kids follow along with a female voiceover, yelling out letters, running in place and doing jumping jacks. At the end of the song, they spin in circles, tumble on the ground and kick their legs in the air. "You guys did fabulous," Rogers says gleefully. On this particular day, the students were jabbing to Rocky in the afternoon. Usually, Rogers reserves a few minutes in the afternoon for playacting animals as part of a math exercise. "On the days we don't have PE, we'll try to do this," Rogers said. "They always ask for it." This August, state policy will require every elementary and middle school in North Carolina to provide 30 minutes of exercise a day. Alamance-Burlington schools are already well ahead of the game. Recess and gym classes count toward the requirement, but the school system is encouraging classroom teachers to use structured exercise as much as possible. Alec French, the school system's lead teacher for health and physical education and a PE teacher at Sylvan, said elementary school teachers use "energizers" developed for them last summer by the State Department of Public Instruction. Gym teachers like French only see students one or two days a week, so classroom teachers take over the other days. "Most schools have had time anyway that they have dedicated to getting the kids outside to 'recess,'" French said. "The idea is get them moving." The other idea is to weave classroom instruction into the exercises, something that Rogers really appreciates. "To see them get excited about learning letter sounds, that's like amazing," she said. French said the state wants to make sure that children are getting a workout because they get less of it at home. In recent years, childhood obesity and the health problems it brings have become a concern. "They're not quite as active as they used to be," French said. "You're not seeing them playing touch football in the back yard as often as you used to." Ann Creech took the opportunity to get her fourth-grade students at Sylvan excited about walking and running on the playground while learning a little geography. "We're walking and running from Manteo to Murphy," Creech said, pointing to a map hanging on the classroom wall. "We're just outside Winston-Salem." PARENTS ALSO GET involved by sending in a note every time a child walks or runs with them at home. Creech said the learning exercise makes sense because she teaches North Carolina history. She also found the opportunity to incorporate math, because every week the students add up a log of their laps and figure out how many inches it equates to on the map. "The kids really get into that," Creech said. Both Rogers' and Creech's students still have some free time to play kickball or run around on the playground. But Creech said she typically has the students do a lap or two at the beginning of recess. "It doesn't really change how much time they have, but it makes it more structured," she said. French said that educators are working on a series of educational "energizers" for middle school students for the fall. In middle school, students most often play intramural sports.

"You're not talking about the traditional five-on-five basketball," French said. "They get more students involved." Because those students only get physical education in blocks during the year, some schools have begun hiring staff to help out with the 30-minute requirement. French said hiring will continue into the summer. Also, the Alamance-Burlington Board of Education will have to pass an exercise policy by July 1 as part of the state requirement. Brandee Hayhurst can be reached at brandee_hayhurst@link.freedom.com

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Times-News, Burlington, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Times-News

More News in this Category