Running Activity – Fitness Components

Grade 10 YIS PE Fitness Activity – Lesson 1

This is an activity I have completed to help my Grade 10 Students recall their knowledge about the Fitness Components (from previous learning) and allows me to have mini 1:1 and group conversations while the activity is going on to know that the students have the concepts that they need for our next lesson.

To prepare for this lesson you will need to:

1. Print out this page and cut up the table into their single squares.  Print enough of the Worksheets for each Team (3-4 students) to have a copy.
2. Gather lots of cones – any size/shape and then stick one square under one cone.  If you want this to be easier, get lots of different cones, if you want it to be harder then get cones that are all the same.  You could choose to differentiate for yourself and have the same/like cards under the same colour so that you know where to send students if they are struggling to find some of the information.

Greet your class.  I have pedometers that they are wearing to track their steps, if you are using a different wearable technology then offer that so you can discuss the Fitness aspects with them as they workout.

Warm up: Tagging game or something that gets their heart rate up, movement happening in the legs (as they will be running later) and start using key vocabulary with them such as Intensity, Heart Rate, Breathing Rate etc so that you are setting the tone of expectation and they are starting to investigate what higher intensity work feels like.

Game: Ask the students to put the cones out all over your working space.  We have a Futsal field sized Turf so I asked them evenly distribute the cones out and about.

Create teams by having the student reflect on their warm-up and decide which of their classmates would be able to walk/jog/run at their same or similar pace for 20 mins – this is a good conversation to have.  I ask students to consider their pace one that includes conversation in 1-5 words at a time.  If you can sing you are going too slowly and if you can’t talk much then it is too intense for you.

Each team has a worksheet with boxes that are empty and their job is to find the vocabulary and fill in the missing text.

Rules of this running Game:

1. For the first 10 mins you must have at least 2 members of your team moving, and one/two at the home base.
2. You must only turn over 1 cone (both people go to 1 cone) and check it out and then turn the cone back over and return to Home base.
3. Add the new term or sport to your paper while the next people leave your Base to turn over a new cone.
4. If you have repeated a Cone, then you cannot turn over a new one, you must return to Base.
5. If your cone has a Task card then everyone in the team must perform the task before running out to get a new card.

At the 10 min mark I had them take their pulse and check their step count.  We then had a mad-minute where they had to up their intensity and travel individually (no one at Home base) to as many cones as they could (Cone – Base – Cone etc) without writing anything down.  After the minute we took Heart Rate again and compared it (higher/lower?)  what symptoms do we experience etc) and then I gave them another 7 minutes or so to complete this task.

Students needed teacher interaction and discussion about what they were looking for and stimulus about keeping them moving.  Running is an individual sport but it doesn’t have to be anti-social, it can be very social and this was part of the learning I wanted to share with my students through this activity.

At the end we packed up the cones and went inside our classroom and spent 10-15 mins working through our answers and asking questions.  We discussed Health and Skill-related Fitness and which components from their worksheet belonged where and why.

I finished the lesson choosing a Health Related (Cardio) and Skill related (Muscular Strength – chest/core) and we did a Tabata style of Jump Rope and Pushups x 4 (20secs/ transition x 8) which yielded some really interesting observation of my students!  and a great way for discussion about Specificity of Fitness (out next lesson topic).

Let me know if you have further ideas to strengthen this lesson!