By

Lacinda Adkins,   Central City Elementary School

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Physical Activity Participation

We have a Walking Club that is also in partnership with St. Mary's Medical Center. Our students in the Walking Club walk during recess. We also have a Dance Club, Volleyball Club and Jump Rope Club. Our students also do this during recess. Each club has a different day of the week that they meet. We also had an end of the year awards ceremony for our students who participated in our clubs. They had a great time and were so excited to get something for their hard work.

What improvements have you seen at your school?

We have seen big improvements in our students that participate in these clubs with their behavior. They know that being a part of these various clubs is privilege. We have a lot of behavior issues at Central City. These clubs have made it possible for our students to be apart of something that they feel good about and getting to exercise had helped them use up of a lot of stored energy. They know that if they get into trouble that they will not be able to participate for awhile.

What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Our challenge has been that most of students don't have access to the internet. So, we came up with the idea to have them track their exercise time in a journal that they write in after each time that their specific club meets. That is the only way that we could think of for them to be able to participate. Our school is a very poverty stricken school. The majority of our students do have has access to the internet or have transportation to get to the library to enter their exercise data.

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

We plan on keeping this play around for our upcoming school. We have seen so much improvement in our students behavior that we are going to try it again next year. We also had two lock ins that our students and parents both attended. Our parents got to see what their children have learned and also got to exercise with them. We have also seen that our parents are becoming more involved in being a part of things at the school do to this play!