The President's Fitness Challenge

This week, students in grades three and four will be participating in the President's Fitness Challenge. The Challenge assesses fitness levels through five tests: sit ups, pull ups, sit and reach, the shuttle run, and the mile run. Award levels for the battery of five tests are based upon national norms for boys and girls in specific age groups. Students who achieve scores above the 50th percentile in all tests will earn the National Award, while students posting scores above the 85th percentile in all tests will earn the Presidential Award. This week's pre-test is designed to assess individual fitness areas of strength and weakness. Students will then be asked to set individual goals; subsequent lessons will be molded to help students attain these benchmarks. Follow-up tests will be administered in January with the final tests to be given in April.

The first day of school!

It was great seeing so many happy, smiling faces this morning. Having morning duty, I got to spend an extra 20 minutes talking with students about their summer adventures: horseback riding, trips to Chicago, tubing, and finally getting to let the hair grow out-just to name a few. I enjoyed our chats, but they were all eager to get to class and scurried off at 7:50 a.m. sharp. It was soon quiet and our first P.E. class followed shortly thereafter. We discussed our expectations and went over fire drills/inclement weather procedures. We will continue to do this with the rest of our classes this week before starting fitness testing next week.

Exergaming

Today, we had the privilege of visiting the USF Tampa campus and speaking with Dr. Steve Sanders, Director of the School of Physical Education & Exercise Science. USF boasts one a few exergaming labs in the state. Dr. Sanders and his staff utilize this state of the art lab for both instructional purposes and research. During our time in Tampa, we were able to not only learn about the various exregaming units, but also play a few of them. Our personal favorites were the exerbike linked to a PS2 motorcross game and the kickboxing game that tested your reaction time and fitness level.

According to Dr. Sanders, their research has shown that behavioral issues decrease when students are using the exergaming equipment. He also noted that they have just recently finished a study at a local elementary school that showed students using the exergaming lab averaged and sustained higher heart rates than their counterparts in a regular physical education classes.

A well-equiped lab runs around $50,000.

Here We Are!

Welcome to our new blog!

For those of you who may not have already figured this out, you have made your way to the blog for the LD PE team here at Shorecrest Prep in St. Pete! We are looking forward to another PHUN year of PHYSICAL PHITNESS! See you soon!