Images of the stereotypical classroom setting may evoke memories of inactivity, sitting in a desk and uniformly staring at the front of the room, while doing your best to pay attention to the teacher.

However, one local school is implementing innovative methods of getting their students moving around, and incorporating some physical activity in the classroom.

Principal for the Blackie K-8 school Fred Woods says, making these efforts, helps kids both physically and mentally.

"There is a push on staying healthy, so what kinds of things in school are making us healthy, while we're learning? There's little things as simple as an under the desk bike, so you can be peddling for a student that needs to move. However, what it comes down to, is teachers understanding the need for those tools, and the kids need to move, because as students are moving, they are also remembering."

Vice Principal for the Blackie school Debra Sorensen says along with bikes and stand up desks, kids are encouraged to make a quick jaunt around the track to help them process novel information.

"We have a nice track at Blackie, so we provide students a question, get them to take it out on the track and think out the answer for five minutes and then come back in. So it forces the students to think and talk about the answer, while moving."

Woods says a slogan for their school is "Don't walk in the hallways".

"The "don't walk in the hallways" is something we brought into our school. It's just a pattern using vinyl tiles on the floor, and kids are kids! If they see a pattern, they'll follow that pattern, so we often see them playing hop-scotch in the hallways on their way to class."

As a phys-ed teacher, Woods knows the dire need students have for physical activity, and says this effort aims to reverse the limited time students have for physical activity.

"Kids are spending seven hours a day in school, in Blackie we have the luxury of a daily phys-ed class, however in larger schools, sometimes kids are only getting two periods of phys-ed a week. So where are they getting that opportunity in a seven hour day to be moving and staying healthy?"

 

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