By Renee Wood
Healesville High School has created an action plan to improve physical activity among students following the school joining a Deakin University research project.
The project is investigating the level of activity in adolescents by collecting daily data, which in turn will aim to discover how more activity improvements can be made.
The study first started in term two and now in term three the action plan is being implemented.
Learning Specialist Tyson Biffon said there are a lot of students across the board who don’t meet physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines.
“It’s about seeing if a program like this can help to get more kids hitting those goals in terms of the amount of physical activity and the amount of sedentary behaviour they’re participating in,” Mr Biffon said.
There are three targets within the action plan which include physical environment, active breaks and activities at recess.
So far these have been addressed by installing standing desks, breaking up lessons with bouts of physical active learning and having more physical activity equipment available to access during lunch breaks.
Mr Biffon said the students have been the main drivers and are taking ownership in the improved activity changes.
All education departments are also being engaged, including the arts department which has supported circus activities.
“Things like that, it’s something different that will hopefully target kids that stereotypically don’t get involved,” he said.
“With the physical activity, hopefully what it does is it introduces kids to a wide range of things, so that maybe they do find something they’re interested in they don’t necessarily look at as physical activity.”
During the action phase, data will still be gathered to uncover the changes in behaviour and what else could be implemented.
“It might even show that there are areas that we can improve on, it might show that the kids are still sitting down for prolonged periods of time… so it’s going to be good to be able to reflect and see how much of an impact it’s made.”
