Health and Fitness

Activities

The activities below may take a number of weeks to complete. If time is limited, you may wish to select the activity that is most relevant to your pupils.

Healthy Eating and Energy Foods

Ask your pupils for their thoughts on what eating healthily and having a balanced diet means.

Continue with a more specific discussion on why athletes have to make sure they eat healthily. Suggestions may include needing energy to train, making sure they get vitamins and nutrients to aid muscle growth and repair.

Using the BBC Good Food Eat Like An Athlete resource (in right-hand column), ask your pupils to create a daily menu for an athlete in training. They must choose an appropriate breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack.

Fit for Life

Ask your pupils to think about what they did yesterday. They should create a table, with two columns and a number of rows. In the first column tell them to record the hours they were awake during the day, and in the second column write what they were doing during that time.

For example:

Time	Activity
7 - 8	Get up (7.30) Get dressed Eat breakfast
8 - 9	Walk to school (20 minutes)
9 - 10	In class

When they have finished, ask them to review their day and count how long they were physically active for. For example, if someone walked to and from school (40 minutes), played football at lunch time (15 minutes) then took the dog for a walk in the evening (20 minutes), he or she was active for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Explain that children and young people between the ages of 5 and 19 should have 60 minutes of physical activity every day. Discuss if they think most young people their age get this amount of physical activity. Discuss the reasons why some young people may find it difficult to get enough exercise.

Organise the class into groups. Ask each group to design a questionnaire to find out the level of participation in sport, or physical activity, in the school and how to improve it. Each group must present their questionnaire. Ask for feedback on the most effective questions and, as a class, agree on the questions to use in the questionnaire.

Allow your pupils time to conduct the survey. When they have collated the finished questionnaires, ask each group to decide how to present the data. If possible, your pupils could video some responses to the questions and then edit these together to display with the survey results.

Review and discuss the results of the survey. Was the level of physical activity or participation in sport what they expected? What sorts of reasons were given for not getting enough physical activity (‘can’t be bothered’, too busy, insecurity, cost)? Brainstorm ways to improve the level of physical activity.

Present or display the data from this survey as part of a school Olympic and Paralympic Celebration Event.

Get Active

Recap on the results of the survey and the reasons cited for not getting enough physical activity. Ask your pupils to think of types of activities or sports that young people might be interested in. Encourage them to suggest activities or sports that young people may not be so familiar with, for example hip-hop dance, fencing, archery, t’ai chi, zumba or goal ball.

Ask your pupils to research a chosen activity or sport. Their aim is to find out more about the activity, if it is available locally and if there are costs associated with it (for example equipment, lessons or club membership). Make sure that each pupil has chosen a different activity or sport. Suggest that some pupils research some of the Paralympic sports such as goal-ball or boccia.

Ask each pupil to create a podcast about their activity/sport. The podcast should be aimed at young people who do not get enough physical activity each day. The aim of the podcast is to persuade young people to try out their activity. It should describe the activity/sport, highlight the benefits of the activity and then give information about how young people can get involved. Pupils should select appropriate images and interviews to illustrate the podcast, for example they might interview a local person who plays the sport or teaches a class.

Use a selection of the podcasts to display during the school Olympic and Paralympic Games Celebration Event. When pupils are planning the event, suggest that they take some of the activities they looked at in their podcasts and hold taster sessions for other pupils in the school.

Further information on how to produce a podcast is available from teachingideas.co.uk/ict/podcasting and www.podcasthowto.com/start-podcasting/.