I believe one of the most important goals for any Health and PE program is application. It is critical that we give students actual practice living a healthy lifestyle while they are young so that when they grow up they know what to expect and have the critical thinking skills to overcome the busyness and craziness of life.
Often, the only time students hear anything about health is in that one high school class, and the information they get is from a 300-page book. What ends up happening is they forget everything by the next school year because there was no application. Everything was centralized around that one class or teacher and they never took any ownership over those habits for themselves. We must help students understand the why behind stewarding their bodies, and then give them simple ways to practice what that looks like in their day-to-day life.
When F.O.R.M. Curriculum helps schools with their PE and Health programs, we build out a custom plan to deliver all the content of our curriculum to fit their school schedule and needs. But we don’t stop there. We help them with a simple framework for how they can help students apply what they are learning all throughout the class. Below is an example framework:
Monthly Application schedule:
(This is what you assign on the first day of the week)
Week 1: Movement Assignment (3-4x per week for 30 minutes)
Week 2: Nutrition Challenge (Write down 3-4 meals that week that were nutritious. We have a PDF for this that you can find at formcurriculum.com.)
Week 3: Sleep Journal (Write down the time they went to bed, the time they woke up, and the hours of sleep they got as a result) Week 4: Put it all together for a Maintenance Workshop
Finding vision: Have them journal and think through what they are called to and then help them see the importance of health in that.
Community and Partnership: Have them write down 2 leaders in their life (Teacher, sibling, coach) they want to press into, 2 peers they can build deeper relationship with, and 1 younger person they can pour into (Teammate, sibling, etc)
Schedule and Preparation: Have them write down their schedule for the week and help them see how health can fit the pillars into their schedule.
This is just an example and is usually tweaked in many different ways depending on the school, but there are a few things to note. We split the application up into the 4 pillars of our curriculum (Functional Fitness, Nutrition, Rest and Recovery, and Maintenance.) These 4 pillars teach students that as long as they have a simple routine in each of these areas they will be in a good spot to sustain a healthy lifestyle. It becomes a simple checklist they can think through when life gets crazy.
Each week in class we have a different challenge themed on each of those pillars above. The teacher reviews the challenges and makes sure students are prepared to complete it. At the end of the week, the teacher reviews how students did and coaches them on how they can do even better. Some students need more help with different challenges than others, so this is where the teacher can give real-life insight and feedback.
There are endless challenges you can come up with in these categories. Tweak this framework to support your classes and students. Every school is different! Overall I would encourage you to keep it simple and consistent throughout the year. Reach out if you want to meet with someone on the F.O.R.M. Curriculum team and we can help create a custom plan for application that fits your school.
Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash
