
Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE)
- 2. The Let’s Move! Program
Created with the ambition to solve childhood obesity within a generation, the Let’s Move Program is an initiative designed to encourage a healthy lifestyle during a child’s earliest years.
But as well as focussing on the importance of keeping physically active, this also means ensuring that the children have access to healthy and affordable food, both at home and at school. Details on how these goals can be achieved are outlined in the Childhood Obesity Task Force Report.
- 3. Physical Activity Guidelines
A set of guidelines for Americans, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is designed as a guide to some of the best practices for teaching the importance of health and nutrition to Americans aged 6 years and older.
The Physical Activity Guidelines (PAG) include recommendations for levels of physical activity at all age levels, and also includes detailed information on safety considerations and injury prevention.
Similar to many of the studies and reports we’ve already mentioned, the PAG also concludes that most health benefits occur with a least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical exercise each week. There’s also a similar resource for nutrition, entitled ‘Dietary Guidelines for Americans‘, which is aimed at helping Americans over the age of 2 years old to focus on maintaining a healthy diet.
- 4. President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition
Comprised of chefs, physicians, fitness professionals, and educators appointed by the President, the President’s Council is designed to encourage all Americans to adopt a healthy lifestyle through regular exercise and good nutrition.
Originally named the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, which was founded in 1956, the Council also includes a Science Board. Made up of scholars who have made significant contributions to the field of health and nutrition, the Board was formed in 2003 to ensure that all the advice available through the President’s Council is scientifically accurate.
Screenshot of PCFSN website – Physical Activity Initiative
- 5. Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP)
The CSPAP is the result of a collaboration between the CDC and SHAPE America, and is designed as a way to help develop new physical activity programs for schools, or improve those currently in place.
CSPAP works on the target of providing students with 60 minutes of physical activity each day, and should be considered an outline of how many different groups of people can work together to create more opportunities for children to be involved in physical activity.
This also includes a step-by-step process for developing, implementing, and evaluating a comprehensive school physical activity program.
- 6. CDC Physical Activity Facts
A collection of interesting facts related to the participation in physical activity by young people, as revealed by national surveys. Also includes some useful resources that detail the important role schools, families, and communities play in promoting youth physical activity.
Assessing physical fitness level and improvements
An important part of any teaching plan, whether it’s for math, geography, or PE, is to be able to plan and create assessments that are capable of distinguishing which level the children are at academically.
The difficulty is that a child’s ability in PE can be influenced by a whole range of factors that can’t necessarily be compared to any pre-defined list of grades.
Judging the effectiveness of a particular lesson plan can also be difficult. It’s not practical to accurately measure energy expenditure on a large scale, and the ability for children to perform detailed recall often makes self-reporting assessments less accurate than when performed by adults.
It’s always best to start off with the basics. The following list of factors are influential in determining the physical activity level of any student, and can perhaps be used to determine whether they are reaching the recommended weekly amount of physical exercise:
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