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Schools should increase kids' physical activity
Filed under: Development/Milestones: Babies
The American Heart Association recently recommended that schools lead the way to ensure that all children and youth participate in adequate physical activity during the school day. The policy and specific practice recommendations were:- Schools should ensure that all children and youth participate in a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during the school day, plus the option of extracurricular and school-linked community programs.
- Schools should deliver evidence-based health-related PE programs that meet national standards to students at all school levels. These programs should include moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 50 percent of class time, as well as teach students the motor and behavioral skills needed to engage in lifelong physical activity.
- States and school districts should ensure that PE is taught by certified and highly qualified PE teachers at all school levels. States should hold schools accountable for delivering PE programs that meet national standards for quality and quantity (i.e., age-appropriate amounts of time per week spent active during class). Each state should include physical education in its core curriculum and instructional quality.
- Schools should provide clubs, lessons, intramural sports and interscholastic sports programs that meet the physical activity needs and interests of all students. Schools should promote walking and bicycling to school.
- School leaders should work with local government to ensure safe routes to school.
- Child development centers and elementary schools should provide children with at least 30 minutes of recess each day.
- Schools should provide evidence-based health education programs emphasizing behavioral skills focused on increasing physical activity and decreasing sedentary behaviors.
- Colleges and universities should provide programs that produce teachers who are highly qualified to deliver evidence-based physical education and health education programs.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
8-19-2006 @ 10:15PM
ann adams said...To paraphrase a well known campaign slogan "it's the tests, stupid". (Not you Heather).
PE and recess take away from class time for starters. The fools who designed NCLB (and didn't fund it) think it makes sense to keep the kids sitting at their desks all day cramming. Fresh air? Don't be silly.
We're not building new schools fast enough to keep up with demand. The schools are building portables all over what used to be the playground areas. (I'm talking elementary but it's spreading). Do they do squats at their desks? Where do they run?
Money. Try to get a bond issue passed for schools. I've ranted about that one before. The first things to go are the "non-essentials"; music, art and then PE. They all require teachers and equipment and are considered frills. They're not of course. They are as important in their own way as the three r's. Kids who know music do better than math than those who don't.
We've so far hung on with recess and PE and they've begun focusing more rather than less on PE in the middle schools with standards to be met to the best of the student's natural ability. I'm glad to see it even as a person who hated PE as a kid.
And I should stop ranting now.
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8-20-2006 @ 7:43AM
Brenda Evans said...I remember having at least half an hour for recess when I was a child, and it might have been longer than that. Certainly it was enough time to run around and get hot and sweaty and out of breath. Calmed us down too, and made us ready to do the afternoon's work. My son, who is in the fifth grade, gets 15 minutes, and that includes the time going there and back.
This is purely personal opinion, but I feel that the incidence of medicating children for various attention disorders started going up when recess time started going down.
Our school still has PE twice a week, but I still think children need a good recess every day. Given our current obesity epidemic, we need to embrace physical activity as a culture once more and that includes making time for it in the school day. It shouldn't only be available as an extra-curricular activity.
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8-20-2006 @ 8:57AM
Karen Taylor said...Going to school in the 60's and 70's we had mandatory gym class every day for an hour. Rarely was there an overweight student you were in school with. When schools started to cut out programs physical education was the first to go. You want kids to be healthy, put phys.ed. back in the schools daily..... It is a no brainer.....
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