Summary
After a lesson on the elements of fitness, students inquired about the importance of personal, community, and global health needs. After considering how to have a healthier life at school, students analyzed their community’s health needs and determined the health risks of the immediate area. Students determined their community was comprised of persons statistically at risk of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure and that this contributed to a low incidence of physical activity and a culture of high fat, sugar, and salt content of foods, in which all are risk factors for obesity. Poor access to health care due to economic status promotes a community that does not have access to or knowledge of preventive health care procedures. To help solve these issues and the epidemic of obesity, the students developed a free Community Health and Fitness Fair that included vendors from the local community that provided health screenings, lessons in healthy food and cooking, examples of exercise availability in the area, and focus on getting kids and adults involved in becoming more healthy. The community was impacted by the students and connected with resources to help the people in the area live a more healthy lifestyle
TIPC Ratings
Ideal
While the focus of the lesson was not research primarily, the lesson scores high in the category due to the assembling and synthesizing of exposure to all the information. Students worked with the library media specialist before generating questions for the Skype expert they questioned. They used the answers and ideas from the Skype session to justify the vendors they invited to their fair. Most of the research for this project evolved on the day of the health and fitness fair with the participation of the vendors that were researched and invited by the students. The community benefited from the research of the students, thus making this community event an authentic task for these students.
Ideal
Communication and Collaboration is a primary focus for this project. Throughout the entire project, students worked together towards the authentic task of enlightening the community on the importance of fitness and obesity. Working through a project organizer, teams of students completed tasks and assumed roles necessary for the fair to be executed smoothly. Students chose to interview experts using the tool Skype when they came to the issue about how to design and orchestrate a health and wellness community event, instead of a face-to-face interview. The website they created, as well as their student generated flyer, was communicated to via the HCPS Twitter feed. In addition to the Twitter exposure, the Director of Media Relations for HCPS released a Press Release.
Ideal
Students used digital tools to think critically and problem solve during this project and throughout the entire procedure. After posed with the question about how to influence community’s awareness of health and fitness goals, students used the data collected from a Google Form to justify their decision to create a community health and fitness fair. While developing ideas about vendors and people to contact, students used the tool Padlet to collaborate and analyse the common trends and themes discussed by their classmates. In addition, students authored their own questions for a Skype expert and justified their decisions based on knowledge from the expert.
Ideal
Creating, designing, and executing a health and fitness fair was meaningful work that gave the students an opportunity to participate in an authentic experience. Their work was original, meaningful, and had relevance to their life, opinions, and passions about health and wellness. Synthesizing knowledge from their own life, their instructor, experts, and vendors, students generated the a new way to relate fitness goals to their community based on their interests. Executing this fair required students to take a risk; students were unsure whether their hard work would pay off and the community would benefit since this was the first health fair their school facilitated
Student Artifact
Student Reflection
