The President's Challenge / Choose a Challenge / Physical Fitness Test / Award Benchmarks

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Using The Fitness Assessment To Learn About Comparing and Describing

Today we began our 3rd nine weeks fitness assessment. We will get the student's height, weight, max push ups and sit ups, shuttle run time and either mile or half mile run time. We will compare these numbers to the first 2 fitness assessments that we have done this year. We are looking to see if the numbers are going up, down or staying the same. We can also compare these numbers to the president's council on physical fitness numbers. We are taking this assessment as a snapshot of the student's fitness level. This is our way of describing the fitness level of the student on this day. The repetition number and the stopwatch do not lie.

Using Race Times To Teach Averages

Today we had the students determine their average time for the 50 yard sprint. One student would time while the other ran. Each students had several opportunities to be the time keeper. The student would run and be timed for three races. The students in 4th and 5th gave us the average time. Students in 3rd grade were asked,"If it takes you 12 seconds to run to point a and then back, how long does it take you to run to just point a?" The students gave varying answers such as 6 because 6+6=12 and 6 times 2 equals 12. Grades 1 and 2 were able to learn how to write the time the correct way and what it meant.

Developing Number Sense

The term "number sense" involves several concepts of magnitude, ranking, comparison, measurement, rounding, percents, and estimation, including:


estimating with large numbers to provide reasonable approximations;

judging the degree of accuracy appropriate to a situation;

solving real-life problems involving percents and decimal portions;

rounding (understanding reasons for rounding large numbers and limitations in comparisons);

choosing measurement units to make sense for a given situation;

comparing physical measurements within and between the U.S. and metric systems; and

comparing degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius in real-life situations

Teaching Perimeter and Area Using the Blacktop and Field

Using the blacktop and field to learn about perimeter and area. For grades 1 and 2 we will be demonstrating how to measure the blacktop and field with a large tape measure. For grades 3-5 the students will actually use the large tape measure to measure the field, the blacktop, baseball field, tennis court and 4 square court. The upper grades will then be asked to multiply length times width to find the area. To draw on last week's work we will ask the students in the upper grades to tell us what one half, one quarter, 25%, 50% of the area.  

Using Long Jump to Teach Measurement

This week we used the long jump to teach about measurement. For 1st and 2nd grade we introduced the concept of measuring. For 3rd grade we had the students measure their long jump. We discussed converting the inches to feet and feet to inches. For 4th and 5th grade we had the students measure the long jump and convert the measurement to inches. They will also find the average of the 3 jumps.

Using Relay Races to Learn Time and Averages

This week we used relay races to teach about time and averages. For all grades the students discussed and put themselves on teams using the count off method. We discussed how this was dividing them. The students were given the jobs of timer, starter and finisher. All teams used a stopwatch. First and second graders logged in their journals their team time using minutes and seconds. For 3rd grade the students had to convert their time from minutes and seconds to seconds. 4th and 5th graders logged their team time and then divided by the number of racers to get the average time.