Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Part A: What is data?

20 minutes

Part B: Data collection

20 minutes

Part C: Plan for change

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students understand...

health principles around food, physical activity and mental health
connections between behaviours and actions and their impacts on health.

Students can...

conduct a survey of their peers about their health habits
critically evaluate data and think creatively to create a school-wide health program in response to data
work together effectively as a team.

Part A: What is data?

Step 1

Write the prompt “I keep healthy by…” on the board.

Facilitate a class discussion in response to the prompt. Encourage students to think in terms of physical health/active lifestyle, healthy eating and mental health, and the actions through which these areas can be maintained. Keep a list of responses on the board. You might like to label which ones relate to physical health (Ph), healthy eating (E) and mental health (M).

Step 2

Discuss the difference between open-ended and closed questions with regards to conducting a survey. You might prompt students by asking:

What type of data can be gathered with open-ended questions?
What are some of the limitations of these types of questions?
Suggested answer: Open-ended questions may elicit a wide range of responses, but the data gathered might be too varied to be of any use.
What type of data can be gathered with closed questions?
What are some of the limitations of these types of questions?
Suggested answer: Closed questions will manage the data load, but might exclude some important information that participants might offer up when they’re not limited by picking from one of many multiple-choice answers.

Step 3

Explain the difference between qualitative and quantitative data and link it to open and closed questions.

Qualitative data is often worded answers to questions including lengthy responses. It allows the respondents' thoughts and opinions to show through but makes comparisons across the population difficult. Qualitative data is collected using open-ended questions.

Quantitative data is a collection of votes or counts in response to a question. It provides a specific picture of the population but lacks the explanation behind the results. Quantitative data is collected using closed questions.

Part B: Data collection

Step 1

Explain to students that they will be conducting a survey to gauge the overall health of the school, based on the areas discussed at the top of the lesson (physical health, healthy eating, mental health).

They will then use their survey findings to create a preventative health strategy for their school that will have a positive impact. They may also need to conduct some research into healthy behaviours they might use to encourage a healthier school culture.

Step 2

Share these recommendations made by the Australian Government Department of Health or World Health Organization.

Children and adolescents aged 5-17 years:

should do at least an average of 60 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous intensity, mostly aerobic, physical activity, across the week.
should incorporate vigorous-intensity aerobic activities, as well as those that strengthen muscle and bone, at least 3 days a week.
should limit the amount of time spent being sedentary, particularly the amount of recreational screen time.
should do several hours of a variety of light physical activities.
should limit sedentary recreational screen time to no more than 2 hours per day.
should have an uninterrupted 9 to 11 hours of sleep per night for those aged 5-13 years and 8 to 10 hours per night for those aged 14-17 years.
should have consistent bed and wake-up times.

They can also consider these recommendations from the Heart Foundation on healthy eating to protect your heart:

Eat plenty of vegetables, fruit and wholegrains.
Include a variety of healthy proteins especially fish, seafood, legumes, nuts and seeds with smaller amounts of eggs and lean poultry. Limit lean red meat to 1-3 times a week.
Choose unflavoured milk, yoghurt and cheese.
Include healthy healthy fat choices with nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and their oils for cooking.
Use herbs and spices to flavour foods instead of salt.

Step 3

Assign students to small groups and have them prepare a survey to use in other classes around the school. They will need to ensure their questions help them find out if the students are meeting any of the health recommendations provided above.

To avoid classes being surveyed by multiple groups, you might like to nominate a class or year level to each of your survey groups.

The Student Worksheet contains some suggestions for areas and structures of inquiry. However, your class may have their own ideas and may want to structure the questions and responses differently.

Invite groups to swap surveys and provide feedback. They could look out for the following:
Have you covered all three areas of health (physical health, healthy eating, mental health)?
Have you used both open and closed questions so you can collect both qualitative and quantitative data?
Are your questions going to help you find out if your school community is meeting the health recommendations we looked at earlier in the class?

Step 4

Have students survey the school. Depending on the size of your school, you may consider targeting the survey at a particular year level or class.

Part C: Plan for change

Step 1

Invite students to read and review the data they collected. What do they notice? Do they see any themes or gaps?

Step 2

Invite students to compare their results to the recommendations they looked at in Part B.

If students notice that there are recommendations not being met by the students in their school, it could provide a good area for them to focus their preventative health strategy on. They can use the data to help them prioritise the ones needing the most work across the school.

Step 3

As a class, invite students to list ways they might encourage healthier habits in their school community.

This could take many forms, such as: instigating a menu change at the school canteen, asking your principal to invest in more play equipment, or organising umpired sports at lunch or recess to encourage students to be active. The change should be realistic and achievable (and in some instances, measurable). Some change might be immediate and easy to organise, such as umpiring a soccer match during lunchtimes. Others might require persuasive letters to be written to the principal outlining the suggested strategy.

Step 4

Allow time for students work independently or in small groups to plan their preventative health strategy and how it will be implemented.

They will need to write up a strategic plan which explains the data they have gathered, the research behind their suggested change, and how they intend to implement/encourage the change.

Step 5

Students can create videos, posters, write a speech for assembly, or use any other medium to inform the school community about their preventative health strategy. The advertisements should feature encouraging messages for students to switch to a more healthy mindset, supported by the data and research they have gathered.

Help them get their messages out there.

Reflection

Invite students to volunteer to share their plans, and receive constructive feedback from their peers. You could use this framework for the feedback:

I really like...
Have you considered...?

Allow students some time to reflect on the entire process, perhaps by writing a brief reflection, evaluating some of the challenges they faced in the data collection phase.

Differentiated learning

Extension

Students might like to keep a running report of how their programs are faring and some of the challenges they have encountered along the way. They could provide weekly or monthly updates on their projects that include both formal and informal feedback.

After the campaign has run for a few weeks or months, students could re-conduct their surveys. Students can write up a report on their campaign, reflecting on challenges they faced in its implementation, changes they would make to future campaigns and an assessment on whether the campaign achieved the intended change.

Additionally, students could graph the results of both surveys.

Provisions for learning support

You might prefer to run one single survey with the whole class and divide up the roles between groups of students based on their strengths, for example, you could have teams for interviewing, data analysis, media production, speech writing, speech making.

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Jump Rope For Heart - Healthy School Strategy

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Summary

Lesson guides and printables

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