Where did that Healthy Eating Post Go? ...AKA Getting Organized for Better Teaching

Eating disorders and body image issues can be life changing for students during the adolescent years. They are, at the very least, a distraction from learning and can escalate quickly into a major problem for your students. Seeing these types of issues in the school setting, has reminded me how important it is to include life skills in my teaching. We are in the business of teaching our students how to be healthy and successful as much as we are in the business of teaching them the specifics of our particular subject areas. 

As I was reading Joann’s overview of eating disorders and body image, I thought about some previous posts we have written about nutrition and exercise.  These columns are very relevant to teachers trying to tackle issues of self-esteem, body image, and healthy living in the classroom.  If you are looking to encourage healthy eating, try implementing some ideas and resources from our previous posts, You Are What You Eat and Battle of the Bulge.  Good health habits are not formed through healthy eating alone, and with current budget cuts teachers can’t always rely on a P.E. program to encourage exercise. Get Out and Run! and Brain Gym present physical education ideas that are easy for classroom teachers to implement during regular classroom time. 

As I was searching our blog site to find these entries, I realized how hard it can be to find specific things online, even when I know exactly what I am looking for.  Ideas I come across online every day can get lost in the shuffle if I don’t have an easy way to bookmark them to find them later.  How often have you read a great idea in a blog or website that you decide revisit later, when you “have time?”  The real problem is remembering what you wanted to come back to read and where you found it. (Finding the time is hard, too, but I haven’t come across any solutions for that one!)  I am constantly reading blogs from my Google reading list, Facebook posts, and Twitter updates from fellow educators.  I can “Like” them, retweet them, and join in discussions about the ideas, but that doesn’t help me easily organize the ideas so I can find them again when I am ready to use them. 

It’s nice for teachers to be able to organize findings to use later, and we can pass on this very valuable skill to students for their own research and organization. 

There are quite a few methods to keep track of notes and webpages you don’t want to forget.  You can bookmark sites on your computer or use one of many online bookmarking tools.  I haven’t worked with too many of these tools, and I would like to know if there are certain ones any of you suggest and have used successfully.

A friend of mine who is an avid technology user and kindergarten teacher suggested one method for organizing my online findings. (Thanks Mr. K!) I have been really happy with it, since I can access my saved pages on different devices like my phone or iPad.  It’s been keeping me more organized, and hopefully it will help you stay a little more organized this year, too. 

This blog post, A Web-to-Evernote Workflow that Works Everywhere, explains the process well.  Basically, I signed up for two different accounts: Instapaper and Evernote.  I dragged a “Read Later” button onto my computer’s toolbar from Instapaper’s site, and I click it anytime I come across a page I want to read later.  When I find some extra time to look at my archived pages, I click a button in Instapaper to send the ones I like over to Evernote, where I can organize them however I like.  I installed Evernote on my Android phone and my iPad, so I can access my notes and saved pages from anywhere.  I can also access them on the web by signing into my account from any computer.  Cool, huh?

I hope the resources and suggestions Joann and I present each week are immediately useful.  If not, click “Read Later” and save these ideas and resources for later!

~Peggy's Corner - 8/26/2011~

Movies on my Mind

Movie day!  Students love to be entertained, and teachers love the chance to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief (or tackle that giant pile of grading).  No lectures to take notes on, just a passive viewing of a movie in a nice, dark, cool classroom, right?  I hope not.  I hope we can find simple ways to use movies in class as more than just entertainment.  Instead, movies can engage students and inspire thoughtful, critical thinking about current classroom topics.

Teachers have used movies and filmstrips in the classroom for many years.  At the most basic level, movies can serve as tools to support and reinforce concepts taught in class.  Science classes can watch science films, history classes can watch historical documentaries, and English classes can watch the film versions of books they read in class.  Movies can also serve as the backbone for emergency sub plans in place in case of unforeseen absences.  Some teachers stretch the use of movies even further by watching popular movies that share some link to the material they have taught in class.  For example, a biology class might watch Outbreak or Osmosis Jones, or a history class might watch Shindler’s List following units on related topics. 

In some classrooms, movies are used as a special treat for students, with no apparent link to the curriculum at all.  In this way, movies become more of a babysitter than an educational tool.  My daughter’s first grade class watches a movie every Friday while teachers scramble to catch up with their grading and planning.  I know this is a much needed work time for teachers, but I can’t help but feel that some important learning time is being sacrificed. 

No matter what kind of movie you are showing in class, most students find movie days to be a nice change of pace from the daily grind.  Joann’s Picks this week bring a fun twist to using movies in the classroom by introducing ways to use the movies kids WANT to watch to strengthen their understanding of topics they are learning in class.  As teachers, we can come up with creative ways to link popular kids’ movies to the important topics we are teaching.  With some planning, we can promote active participation and creative thinking on movie days, and we can feel good that our students are getting the most out of their school day. 

If you have a popular movie in mind, contemplate the math, science, English, and history concepts you can tie to it.  Create your own connections and assignments, or search the Gateway to see if someone has already begun the process for you!  I searched for examples of creative uses for movies in the classroom.  I hope this short list can help you find ways to incorporate popular films in your classes.  If you have ideas you have used in the past, please share on our blog, Facebook, or Twitter pages.

Movie possibilities are abundant for history teachers.  The History in Film series of lesson plans takes a traditional approach to using movies in the classroom.  Each film on the site includes an outline, timeline of events, and homework questions related to the movie.

ReadWriteThink has lots of activities that connect popular movies to concepts in the language arts classroom.  Decoding The Matrix: Exploring Dystopian Characteristics through Film uses The Matrix to help high school students compare and contrast different types of societies.  Exploring Satire with Shrek is a fun way to use the children’s film to study satire.  Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies is a great tool for language arts students to analyze and compare books and he movies that are based on them. 

The movie Contact can help start conversations about how technology interacts with scientific knowledge.  This lesson plan shows how you can use this movie in your classroom. 

P.E. Central has created a set of activities that can be used along with popular movies to encourage physical activity.  These are some original ways to use movies in the P.E. classroom.

One very creative connection between Hollywood and the classroom comes from the University of Southern Mississippi.  In Macroplex Cinema: Polymers Go Hollywood, students learn about the science of polymers and do simple experiments demonstrating how polymers are used in special effects.

This list shows the variety of resources available to help you include movies in your classroom.  We look forward to learning about ways you have used movies with your students.

~Peggy's Corner - 6/24/2011~

Juiced

Students who follow the news regularly or tune into sports channels such as ESPN are likely familiar with steroid use among some elite athletes. While the rumors of steroid use continue to dog some athletes who deny using such drugs, other athletes have confessed to using anabolic steroids to enhance athletic performance and give them an edge over their competitors. Former California governor and ex-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, NY Yankee Alex Rodriguez, track star Marion Jones, cyclist Tyler Hamilton, and linebacker Shawne Merriman are a few examples of notable athletes who have all admitted to using steroids. The prevalent use of performance-enhancing drugs among famous athletes is particularly troubling in light of the high esteem bestowed upon them by their adolescent and teen fans.

Unfortunately, steroid use isn’t restricted to elite athletes. Increasing numbers of teens who are dissatisfied with their body image turn to steroids as a way to shed excess fat, build muscle mass, and increase muscle strength quickly. Currently, the fastest growing user group is girls aged 12-15, and the median age for both genders to initially try steroids is 15 years of age. A 2006 study conducted by the University of Michigan found that 1.6% of 8th graders surveyed had used steroids at least once, and that 0.9% of them had used steroids in the past year.

Steroids are synthetic substances similar to the male sex hormone testosterone. While anabolic steroids have some legitimate medical uses, teens who use steroids typically do so without the supervision of qualified medical personnel. Hormone balance is extremely important in teens, and those who use steroids face serious side effects and possibly death. Some signs of steroid use in your students may include:

• persistent body odor
  
• rapid weight gain with larger muscle mass
  
• acne
  
• shaking/trembling
  
• jaundice
  
• increased aggressiveness, anger, and/or violent behavior
  
• red or purple spots on the body
  
• gynecomatasia (pronounced breast development in males)
  

The best way to deter students from taking steroids or other drugs is to educate them on the risks. While lessons on steroid use are most common found in physical education, health, and science classrooms, the subject can easily be breached in other subject areas as well. This week I’ve selected two lessons on steroids for high elementary through high school grades, and one lesson on harmful substances for younger students. Throughout the week, we’ll be featuring many more lessons, activities, and other resources on steroids on our Facebook and Twitter pages, so please be sure to check those pages regularly.


How To Identify a Harmful Medicine
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/dcrecord.2011-05-30.0213424848
Subject: Health, Language Arts
Grade: 1

This lesson demonstrates how to identify a harmful medicine or substance and how to respond when offered or discovering one of these substances. While this lesson does not directly address steroid use, it does introduce younger students to the idea that not all medicines are “good,” particularly when not prescribed by a doctor or administered by a parent. This lesson was produced by Healthy Schools, a project of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.


Tendon Damage from Steroids
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/9206
Subject: Health
Grade: 6-12

The purpose of this activity is to help students understand how using steroids can create problems for tendons in the body. This lesson is a product of PE Central, a Web site devoted to providing the latest information about developmentally appropriate physical education programs for children and youth.

Steroids: Are They Worth It?
http://www.thegateway.org/browse/36808
Subject: Health
Grade: 9-12

Athletes acknowledge there is pressure to take steroids to compete. However, doctors caution that side effects from steroid use can include kidney failure, heart disease, brain tumors and impotency as well as behavioral changes. This resource looks at cases from professional, Olympic, and high school sports and what steroids can do to your body. This resource was produced by USA Today, an American newspaper that covers both national and international news and topics.

~Joann's Picks - 6/10/2011~

Get out and RUN!

Teachers in all subjects share the common goal of developing skills and habits in our students that will serve them well throughout their lives. This focus on educating the “whole child” reminds us that a student’s well being includes the health of their mind and body. I love how Joann’s picks this week encompass this concept by combining learning and exercise. Physical well-being and brain health go hand in hand. Read about this connection a little more in this article about a study of 9 and 10 year olds at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The CDC also recently released a list of research to support the importance of physical activity in schools. As an educator, it’s nice to see that there is research showing the importance of this physical activity, but it really boils down to this for me: How are my students going to focus on learning if their bodies are restless?

As many schools are faced with the reality of cuts in “specials” like P.E., the burden of keeping our students active and healthy is all too often shifting to the regular classroom teachers. As a classroom teacher, you may be thinking, “Don’t I already have enough on my plate?!” Adding this extra challenge to your to-do list this year may seem overwhelming. There are lots of neat activities indexed on The Gateway that you can easily incorporate into your everyday routine. Sites like P.E. Central can be very helpful for supplying ideas and activities you can implement, even with limited experience in physical education.

I like the way my daughter’s elementary school is helping teachers include physical activity by sponsoring a “mileage club,” where students walk or run around a designated path to earn punches on a card to show how far they go each day. At the end of each 5 miles, their punch card is full and they earn a little plastic foot to display proudly on their backpack. My daughter was absolutely ecstatic the day she came home with her first plastic foot on her backpack. I love the idea of getting the kids up and moving, but I wonder how long the enthusiasm for little plastic feet will last. I know money is tight, and kids can’t expect huge rewards for running around, but I was inspired to think of a way to make this “mileage club” idea more fun and perhaps even educational.

My mileage club idea is to have the students work toward reaching REAL destinations on a map of the area surrounding their school. They will still run or walk around the track at school, but each time they do it, they will track their total distance on a local-area map. Teachers can incorporate geography and map-reading skills as students plot their progress on a classroom map. Math calculations, goal setting, and motivating others are also topics that would be right at home in this activity. Keep in mind that a lot of the planning and activity ideas can be brainstormed and created by older students. Don’t be afraid to put them to work!

In my “virtual” mileage club, I plan to start by creating stops every 5 miles starting at the school. It was pretty simple to map out a route idea using Google Maps. I typed in the school name, and the name of the first destination I thought would be around 5 miles from the school. I found a popular park five miles from the elementary school, which will make a perfect first stop for the kids, since many of them are familiar with the park and how far away it is from their school. Beyond the park, I chose “stops” the students are familiar with, such as a popular restaurant, a family fun center, and a popular amusement park. My next task will be to contact these businesses and see if they are willing to participate or contribute to the program. I am hoping these businesses will be willing to donate prizes like a free meal, round of mini golf, or maybe even an admission ticket for the students who make it all the way to 30 miles. I think these types of prizes will serve as an incentive along with the foot charms they have been collecting. As the year progresses, I will probably need to add more stops, depending on how far the students go. This will take some time to set up, but with a little effort, you can create a fun program your school can use year after year! Be creative and think about what is around your school, and empower your students to help come up with the goal destination! At our school there are plenty of parent volunteers who want to help out from home, and helping to set up a program like this might be a perfect fit for them.

This is just the beginning of my idea, which I am sure will need a lot of tweaking to make it work just right. I’ll keep you updated on my progress with the planning on our Facebook and Twitter pages. If your school might be supportive of a project like this, you and your students can help start a school-wide push for some physical activity. If not, you can always implement it in a smaller scale in your own classroom, and who knows…It might just catch on. Just search on a map to see what neat places your students can “run,” Or let your class do the searching so their destinations are even more enticing. There are many other great ideas out there, and whatever can motivate students and teachers to be active and have fun will be the best fit for your school.

Is your school promoting any activities to help students improve their physical fitness? We would love to hear about what is working (or not working) around the world. Good luck, and tell your students to keep up the good work.

~Peggy's Corner - 10/1/2010~

Brain Gym

We’re all aware of the grim statistics on overweight American kids. 15% of children aged 6-19 are seriously overweight, while over 10% of kids aged 2-5 are overweight. Within some racial and ethnic groups, the rates are even higher. Doctors and child advocacy groups have continually sounded the alarm that today’s students are the most sedentary and unhealthy generation in American history. Why, then, is physical education caught in the crosshairs of some districts’ politicians and school administrators’ sights as an expendable area of the curriculum?

Earlier this year, the governor of New Jersey raised the idea of eliminating physical education classes for elementary students altogether, and severely curtailing the time required in gym for the upper grades. One reason cited was that those varsity athletes who already practiced 8-10 hours a week risked injury if participating in gym class. Well, maybe. But what about the other 95% of the student body?

Schools and PE teachers who have to defend the importance of physical education in the curriculum are gaining in numbers. Under pressure to raise test scores, school districts look for any additional time in which they can cram extra instruction. Unfortunately, areas like phys ed, art, music, and even recess come under increasing fire as “frills” that can be sacrificed in the name of “enhanced instruction.”

Physical education classes do much more than teach gross motor skills. In addition to improving cardiovascular health and promoting healthy lifestyle skills, gym classes offer more team-building opportunities than any other subject on a regular basis. Good communication is practiced repeatedly, as students learn to cooperate and work with peers of varying skill levels, personalities, and ethnicities. These are vital skills that they will need later in life in their work environments and communities. Kids’ self-esteem can increase, and exercise is a proven stress-buster. Research has also shown a strong correlation between physical activity and increased test scores. MRIs of kids’ brains have revealed that fit kids have significantly larger sections of the brain (particularly the basal ganglia and hippocampus) which govern actions like maintaining attention, the thought process, and complex memory.

My picks this week are from PE Central, a site dedicated to offering the latest information on developmentally appropriate physical education programs for kids. Most students through the teenage years need at least an hour of exercise each day; some of these activities can be done in regular classrooms to help interject some physical movement across the curriculum. As always, please check our Facebook and Twitter pages throughout the week for many additional resources, lessons, news, and information about the importance of student physical education and exercise. Now get those kids moving!

Ridgerunner
Subjects: Physical education, Math, Geography
Grade: 6-12
This is a great activity that combines math, geography, and physical fitness. Over the course of the unit, students gradually increase their jogging time, while plotting their progress on a map of the Appalachian Trail. One lap for the students equals one mile on the map.

Maintaining Target Heart Rates Using DDR
Subjects: Physical education, Math
Grade: 9-12
Get your groove on! Using Dance Dance Revolution, students calculate their target heart rate zones based on individual resting rates, and then maintain their target heart rates while participating in various activities.

Candy Bar Fractions
Subject: Physical education, Math
Grade: 4-5
Students learn about the relationship between exercise and burning calories in this activity. Students divide candy bars into parts, figure the number of calories per section, and calculate how long and vigorously they have to exercise to expend the calories.

~Joann's Picks - 10/1/2010~