By

Kathryn Dunnigan,   Brookman Elementary School

Play:

Walk this Way — Start a Walking Club

Topics:

Access to Healthy Foods,  Physical Activity Participation

I started a walking/running club a few months into the school year. We meet every Wednesday morning before school starts and the students walk or run laps. I use the EZ Scan software to track student mileage. We started the year with about 40 students coming out and we now have approximately 80 students that come every week. We also incorporate the walk/running club during PE as a warm up or we also have running days. The students absolutely love it and strive to be our top runner for boys/girls and to be in the top 10. Students receive charms for every 10 miles they run and our top runner has already passed 50 miles. As a school, we are approaching 8,000 miles this year with our goal being 10,000 miles. I have also held after school runs to get the community and families involved. It has been a huge success! I will definitely continue this next school year and it is my hope that I can have over 100 students participate in the morning. I also created a school wide challenge to incorporate students "Fueling Up on Vegetables". We set a goal for our students to eat 10,000 servings of vegetables during lunch. All of the lunch staff, administration and teachers were involved in getting the students to eat their vegetables. If the students ate a serving of vegetables, whether it was school lunch or a home lunch they were given a ticket. After lunch they would put their ticket in their "house" box. (Each student is in one of four houses). Everyday, I would then count the tickets and give them a house point. It took the students 5 months but they did it!

What improvements have you seen at your school?

Students are excited about running and are all working to earn charms. Students also are more conscious of what they are eating and now know a variety of vegetables.

How do you plan to make this Play last during the school year and beyond?

I will continue to have a walking/running program every year. It is super easy to run the program and I highly recommend the EZ Scan software to anyone with a running program. I will work on opening it up to more students next year and I will also try to get the staff on board so they can run with the students too.