Hello everyone!
We have had some
calls and emails asking about the best ways to implement
Adventure To Fitness into the
classroom and I first want to
say thank you for asking! We have some concepts that can help and I wanted to share with you:
Repetition
Kids benefit from
repetition. I know I'm preaching to the choir about repetition (you probably
have dreams of the alphabet and multiplication tables
every night! Ha)! Teachers are amazed when we say that many of the schools across the nation that use Adventure To
Fitness work our program
into their schedules for the
kids 3 times a week! Most include it once a week on the same day every week so
the kids know to expect it and get amped for it. For 3 times a week, you might
be thinking: "Wow... those
schools must have teachers who just put this on so they don't have to teach the
kids anything." But that is the farthest thing from the truth! I was
actually curious about that myself, so I looked
into all of our high user schools (I'm a realist, you see) and time after time
I was finding that they are exemplary schools- A schools that are recognized
for their achievements in academics and various other efforts. Good
job to you all! In getting some
of their feedback, they said that they pride themselves in keeping the kids
engaged and steadily motivated through out the day. The episodes help do that!
This goes back to the times I have mentioned that physical activity helps
activate the brain for better attentiveness, retention and memory recall.
So, great
implementing of the program: Repetition! Finding at least one time a
week where you carve out 30 minutes to do a full episode with the kids. (P.S. I personally know what a Sherpa is now after watching
the "Abominable Ascent" episode a few times!) Repetition will help your students retain the academics included in each episode. It will also teach them the value in
being physically active if they know that at certain times each week, they will
be exerting some energy. That's what this is all about anyway! Keeping kids
healthy.
Reinforcement
Before and after
episodes, we suggest reinforcing the academic elements from the episode. They
just learned about the Mayans in an episode? Try reinforcing the facts with our activities that we have pre-made for you! I know teachers love to see
activities that are ready to use! Try them out because that repetition about,
say, the Mayans can help out a lot when you're doing a lesson on them! Use the
Episode Standards guide in the PDF format next to the episodes to help you
understand what subjects the episode applies to.
Revitalizing
Maybe you don't have enough time in your day to carve out a whole 30 minutes for an episode. That's OK! Adventure To Fitness episodes can be stopped, paused, re-wound and fast-forwarded however you need. Give your kids a brain break from the monotony of sitting at their desk writing and listening to lectures. They need movement too! So get them up for even just 5 or 10 minutes with a quick clip from one of our adventures. This helps to get that blood flowing again, giving them a little more energy to get through the rest of the day. Some teachers have even written about how they use Adventure To Fitness as a reward. If their students do well on a test, or behave exceptionally well, they put on an episode, and the kids love it! As you can probably remember being a student yourself, class was always more fun when the teacher did something out of the ordinary (even if it was study-oriented!). So revitalize your students and your day by getting everyone up and moving!
Repetition, Reinforcement, Revitalizing! Implement these concepts and your students are on their way to becoming some top adventurers who are healthy and ready to take on whatever you give them!
As always, we are here for your questions and comments so don't be shy!
Keep it moving!