Fitness Circuit Recount!

Last term Room 16 wanted to make a difference because we were watching kids make a difference and we became inspired. We wanted to make a change at our school to help the students at DSS. So we decided we would do just that. We then got into groups and came with some ideas to help our school. 

After we chose to make a difference at our school, we brainstormed a few ideas about how we could do that. Eventually we decided on the idea of a fitness circuit for our school because we thought it would help the most amount of people.

Once we had picked that we were going to do a fitness circuit we got into groups and started drawing up different ideas for different obstacles we could possibly include in our Fitness Circuit. These would be helpful later on in our process when we were picking the final 12 obstacles we would use. Did you know that there are five key components to fitness? These are Muscular Endurance, Flexibility, Cardio Respiratory, Body Composition and Muscular strength. Did you know that running only gives you a cardio workout for your heart but we have made our obstacles to cover all of the components except body composition, which is out of our control because that depends on what people eat.

We did some research and asked students and teachers from Team 2, 3 and 4 some questions about if they would like a fitness circuit at our school. We asked questions like “Would you like the opportunity to have a fitness circuit at our school?” and “Do you consider yourself fit?” 95% of the people we surveyed at our school wanted a fitness circuit at our school to train for things like cross country. Also, even the people who didn’t consider themselves fit wanted to train on a fitness circuit, which could raise the level of fitness at our school.

One of the things we did was choose in our groups what activity to work on there were a lot of things to choose from . There were lots of things like monkey bars, hurdles and tree swings. We had about 14 different obstacles . We have spent alot of our time at school working something to do with the fitness circuit. Also, we have smaller obstacles as well as the larger ones for different ages.

Next we got our measurements for our activities and we divide by 100 and multiplied by 2. That makes a ratio of 1:50. Once we got our measurement to scale we made our models of our activities with dowel. Some people had to make two activities because they had finished and they wanted to help the class finish.

We rang up some building supplies specialist about some quotes for the prices of wood for the fitness circuit. e.g. mitre 10,timu timbers,Rd 1. Mr Koeck priced the wood at retail prices and these are what we have used to help calculate the maximum cost of the project.

We have been going up to the top field most days measuring out the course. Around the course it had to be as close to 400 metres as possible but according to our measurements it was about 394 metres. Braden, Aymon and Caleb and also Mr Koeck spent about 40 minutes up there trying to figure it out. We went round the field 4 times too get it to 394-395 metres. Then Mr Hunt came and told us it would be allright and for a donation he would clear out a piece of land that we don't use so that we can use more space for the fitness circuit. We measured right to the edges of the field.

After we had finished making our models we had to design an instruction template in our groups, that we would end up using for our instructions that would go next to our real obstacle. Of course since each group got to design their own we had at least 12 different designs.

That’s when 6 of us went through and picked the design we thought would be most appropriate and easy to make. Jordan then made one template similar to the one the group had picked and then she emailed it to the whole class. One person from each group got the template up and altered it so it would have correct information for each of their obstacles. Once that was done the instructions were printed.

Since then the BOT have accepted our idea and are working with a group of kids from our class that the teacher choose to be on the fitness circuit committee. We are trying to come up with ideas for fundraising.

I have really enjoyed working on the fitness circuit and can’t wait to see the the finished project. I am looking forward to taking up my spot on the student committee.