[0:02] In today’s podcast, I want to give you a couple ideas of activities you could do with your students at the high school level during a time of pandemic where we’re trying to limit the use of equipment.
[0:30] Every school year as physical education teachers, we’re always trying to come up with ideas and plans to put into place to make sure our students are active, engaged and can take things away from our class that they can use throughout their future, both at home when they move on to college or the military or to the workforce, we’re trying to encourage them to be active. During this time of pandemic that has been more and more prevalent, knowing that at any moment we could be sending our students home for the day or for a week or for two weeks, or for the rest of the school year.
Fitness Walking
[1:02] So we need to make sure the activities that we’re planning in our lessons that we’re providing, we’re teaching our kids how to be active at home and really without equipment. So for us in our Phys Ed classes, we’ve tried a lot of different things. We encourage our kids to fitness walk. We talk about, you know how to fitness, walk what we expect to see and why we’re fitness walking and how to take your pulse and to check whether or not you’re getting your heart rate into that active zone where you’re going to see some benefits. We talked to them about how you know you could fitness walk with a friend while wearing a mask. You can fitness walk with your family at home and that make it become a family exercise activity to help encourage activity at home for everyone. I think it’s one of those things where fitness walking is the easiest thing you can do because you can do it anywhere. You could do it in the halls of your school. You could get outside and do it. Whatever works for you, our mission is to get our students outside as often as we possibly can.
Geocaching
[1:54] Another suggestion I have for you is to think of adventure activities. Geocaching is something that’s really popular. If you have the opportunity to do Geocaching, you could utilize a tool on your cell phone. You could, you know, you could get some geocache devices to do that with your students locally. You could set some geocaches around your school district and teach them how to do it and explore that avenue.
Archery
[2:19] I live in a very rural area, so other activities that we can get outside and do that encourage our students to be active is we actually started an archery unit. Our students are big hunters. They love to go archery hunting, and now they have that opportunity to learn that skill in our classes. So it’s one of those things where those are a couple of activities that are unique or different and maybe you wanna try.
Fitness Videos
[2:39] Maybe you also want to try making fitness videos with your students. You know where you lead them in a yoga exercise or you lead them on an extended stretching routine or a Pilates class. Maybe you want to teach them how to use bodyweight only to do a circuit and you know, they could do it in their living room and jog around the house. So it’s one of those things where you’re trying to build workouts that they don’t need any equipment that they could do at home or they could do here a school. That you can, you know, put a live video out and say, “Hey, today I’m gonna do this workout, join me and it doesn’t need any equipment.”
[3:12] But we have to be creative. We have to realize that the less equipment we use, the safer it will be for our students. So I strongly encourage you to explore ideas. There are lots of great resources is out there to find activities that don’t take equipment but are still getting our students active and that’s what we’re really, really hoping we could do. So again, stay well, be active and encourage, and be a leader.
