Grade 3 Body Systems Journey Continues (Students Predicting Heart Rate)

To follow up on last week’s grade 3 Body Systems unit of inquiry PE integration lesson (see blog post (http://www.pyppewithandy.com/2/post/2012/09/guest-blog-thoughts-by-john-rinker.html) I had the students rotate through 6 fitness stations, each of varying intensity, in today’s class. I explained each of the 6 stations, in detail, and modeled how each exercise was expected to be performed. The students were given the record sheet below and asked to predict what they thought their heart rates would be (per minute) at each station. 

The main reason I did this was to assess how well they understand heart rate ranges when exercising at different levels of intensity. I felt that they had great practice during the last few weeks learning about and recording their heart rates while exercising, but until now, I haven’t really given them the opportunity to predict their HR and then compare their predictions to what their heart rate actually was. 

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They had to think about each station and the level of intensity and then record their predicted heart rates in the space provided (see record sheet above). As well, they had to record how many times they were able to do each exercise (Attempt#1 and Attempt#2). They only had one attempt at each station today but will have another attempt next class. Each of the 6 stations lasted exactly 3 minutes and were as follows:

Burpees Station: How many burpees can you do in 3 minutes?

Cone Run Station: How many laps of the gym can you do in 3 minutes?

Tricep Overhead Pulls Station (using band): How many overhead pulls can you do in 3 minutes?

Bicep Curls Station (using band): How many bicep curls can you do in 3 minutes?

Hop Scotch Station: How many times can you hop through the set up in 3 minutes?

Jump Ups Station: How many jump ups can you do in 3 minutes?

Students in Action During the Fitness Challenge in Today's Class

Results:
For the most part, the students demonstrated a fairly solid understanding that heart beats per minute increases with level of intensity. However, some students either predicted heart rates per minute that were much too low or much too high which was an indication that I must review what heart rate ranges should be. I will provide the classroom teacher, Marina Gijzen, with the results from today to help initiate further discussion related to the circulatory system and heart rate. 

As well, the blog post will serve to model what needs to be done with the other two grade 3 classes (John Rinker and Georgia Perry's classes) which will do the same lesson on Thursday. The video below will be seen by those grade 3 students and a discussion will take place after viewing this video. We hope that this serves to deepen their understanding of heart rate ranges and exercise. To see a few examples of student record sheets please view slide show below. All in all a very good lesson and a good indicator of what needs to be reviewed regarding the circulatory system and heart rate. 

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