Evaluation

 =**__ Evaluation of the Healthy Activity Day __ **=

__**EVALUATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE**__ I developed a series of questions for each leader to discuss, with their students, at the start of their activity. One of the leaders was then required to write down the main thoughts and opinions shared by the group regarding the particular topic. From this feedback I was able to gauge student’s prior knowledge and the discussion also provided a great way of introducing the activity. The following paragraphs are summaries of student’s prior knowledge relating to each topic based on the note taken from initial discussion: Boxing (Physical Activity) ** Students had a good understanding of the importance of physical activity and its correlation to good health and in most groups at least half of them were involved in some sort of organized sport throughout the year. Students were able to identify a number of reasons why people may not get involved in sport, the main ideas were; laziness, lack of money, lack of time, low self-esteem and location. They identified some of the reasons for the importance of physical health as being; reduce obesity, make friends, look and feel good, improve self esteem, develop new skills and its fun. Most students hadn't had any prior experience in boxing which was great because our groups aim was to choose sports involving new skills. This lesson went really well and students seemed to get a lot out of it.
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The general knowledge questions regarding physical activity obviously received the same kind of response as when asked for the boxing. Also similar to the boxing many students hadn’t done Pilates before and were interested in learning about the importance of core strength and realizing that good core strength is important for everyone and that pilates is not just a ‘girl’ sport. Judging from the student surveys they really seemed to enjoy this activity. Self Esteem and Positive Choices (Mental and Emotional Health) ** At the beginning of the mental and emotional health activities students were asked a number of questions to gain prior knowledge on the subject. When asked to define self esteem the majority of the answers revolved around, confidence, self satisfaction, having family support and the ability to make friends. Students were also asked to give examples of good and bad choices they have made and to look at some of the factors that may have directed these choices. Some of the good choices included; play sport, not to drink or smoke. Bad choices included; quitting a sport they loved or not working hard enough at school. Most students seemed to have a basic understanding of self-esteem and the importance of making careful choices and leaders were then able to elaborate on these thoughts and ideas.
 * Pilates (Physical Activity) **
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Before beginning our cooking activity it was clear that students had a basic idea of good nutrition. They could identify foods that were healthy and nutritious, for example various fruit and vegetables and identified unhealthy foods as containing high fats and sugars. Most students didn’t know anything about carbs and about 80% skipped breakfast most mornings, which I thought was an extremely concerning ratio and an issue that was addressed during the lesson. This discussion provided us with basic information to build onto during the cooking exercise. TEACHERS FEEDBACK __** At the start of the day the supervising teacher from each group was given a survey to evaluate the day by ticking the appropriate boxes indicating their opinions of the day, the leaders and the activities. All forms came back really positive which was a great encouragement. High marks were given particularly in the areas of interaction with students, instructional skills and abilities of leaders and finally student learning and involvement. One teacher suggested the use of a few quick exercises in the middle of the lesson to refocus students, which is a great idea that we can use in future. Another teacher noted that we ‘the leaders’ adapted well to some interesting and challenging questions as well as behaviors towards the end of the session. From their comments all the teachers praised the clarity of instructions from leaders and the engagement of students during activities. So well done team. FEEDBACK FROM STUDENTS __**  I designed surveys for the students to fill out at the end of the day regarding their thoughts and ideas on the day and get their opinion. The following are the results from these surveys and a collection of the students feedback; 2) ****Favorite Activity (in order of preference): **Boxing, pilates, cooking, M&M activity, self-esteem activities, drawing hands and none. In conclusion the student surveys showed most participants seemed to be engaged and enjoying the activities and were able to learn a lot as a result. There was only one child who seemed to give negative feedback, describing the day as being; ‘boring’ and ‘average’ and claiming that they didn’t enjoy any of the activities or learn anything. Unfortunately this person didn’t give us any specific feed back regarding what they weren’t happy with in particular, so I have to put it down to the fact they just weren’t having a good day. I think as a group we can feel extremely proud of the feedback from the students and rest assure that most came away having had a positive experience
 * Nutrition and Healthy Eating **
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 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">1) ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">List 3 words to describe the day: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">fun, different, tasty, active, learning, awesome, cool, good, interesting, entertaining, healthy, nice teachers, different, boring, okay, sore, exciting and challenging. **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">3) ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">List one thing you have learnt about self-esteem from this day: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Be positive, nothing, be confident in yourself and your choices, respect yourself and make good careful choices.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">4) ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">List one thing you have learnt about health and nutrition from this day: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Unhealthy food can be modified to be more healthy (ie pizza), always try and eat healthy, importance of looking after your body and the importance of eating breakfast at the beginning of each day.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">5) ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">List one thing you have learnt about physical activity from this day: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Correct boxing technique, importance of stretching, nothing, core strength, how to breath while exercising, always warm-up and cool down, should play sport, if your back hurts during core work your not doing it right and you should do 30min of exercise per day.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial; msofareastfontfamily: Arial; msolist: Ignore;">6) ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">One area of your life you will focus on improving as a result of today’s activities: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> Increase amount of exercise, eat healthier, focus on cool down and stretch after exercise, improve core strength and flexibility, do more boxing and pilates, think positive, compliment people and think carefully about my choices.

**Satisfaction and Favourite Activities Chart**



__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">**TEAM REFLECTION** __ <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> At the end of the day, each team member was given several questions to answer reflecting on the day, in particular describing; whether or not they felt the day was successful and why, how they feel we worked as a team and finally what areas we could have improved. The following paragraph is a summarized collection of everyone’s thoughts ideas and feedback regarding the day. All leaders agreed that our health promotion day was an overall success. The students seemed to really enjoy the activities and the day ran relatively smoothly. Occasionally students became rowdy and easily distracted, especially towards the end of the day and leaders were forced to raise their voice several times to get students attention and maintain order. This may have been prevented with the use of ‘fill in’ activities during the down times, to keep students focused. The wet weather proved to be a slight hindrance to the day, though fortunately most activities were conducted indoors. My boxing session was held outdoors under shelter, and when it started to rain I found it hard to communicate with students over the noise and that their behavior became increasingly poor. I had to stop the group several times to emphasis safety rules, but this was really the only problem that I faced. Other leaders mentioned a decrease in attention span and behavior towards the end of the day when it was raining. Most people stated that although the day went well the planning and preparation leading up to the day was quite stressful at times, due to the little information that we had available and finding it hard to meet up with the group. At the beginning it seemed to be a case of too many ideas and no direction, but once we started to make concrete decisions about the day everything began to fall in place and as expressed by everyone turned out to be a real success. When looking at areas that could have been improved only a couple of issues came to the surface. Firstly the cooking activity at times was a bit of a shemozzle, due to the fact we overestimated the time taken to make the pizzas and found ourselves with a bit of downtime to fill in. Though luckily students didn’t seem to be to fazed by the time gap between activities and were happy to help clean up and just chat with the leaders. The other issue raised was the time gap at the end of the day. We had been told to finish at 3 so therefore planned our activities to finish then, but found that this left us with another time gap, where no one really knew what to do and students were particularly rowdy. It was near impossible to even gain their attention. In hindsight some preplanned short activities would have been useful during this time, but trying to organize 60 rowdy kids, in a small classroom, into some kind of organized activity proved to be a hard task. In conclusion the views and opinions shared by our group, the teachers and the students illustrate that the day was a huge success. Our goals and objectives appeared to have been met, activities ran reasonably smoothly and most importantly most people had an enjoyable time learning about good health and fitness. Well done group!

Documents used on the day for evaluation: