“Kids are working harder than they’ve ever worked before,” San Bernardino CUSD high school PE specialist Scott Smith said. “Kids who hated PE started liking it. They get a true assessment, and they celebrate when they meet their goals.”
When his physical education program needed to improve student engagement, Smith introduced his students to the IHT ZONE heart rate monitor.
“All of a sudden, bam, it was a game changer,” Smith said. “The kids felt they had something to come to class for. The monitor gave them the power they never thought they had.”
Objective Assessment Empowers Students to Focus on Daily Goals
The power? Objective assessment that gave real-time feedback and defined success for each student based on their own individual performance rather than how they looked compared to classmates.
“As soon as we gave them the heart rate monitors, they really felt at that time that we really cared about them as individuals,” Smith said. “They were no longer being graded against somebody else. It allowed them to set their own personal goals (for time spent exercising at an elevated heart rate), and their excitement was focused on achieving that.”
At Portage Central Middle School (Mich.), longtime PE teacher John Dunlop’s seen a similar impact for his students. He relies on the data that the heart rate monitors provide to show each student what they achieve in his classes. Some students, usually the more athletic ones, don’t need much motivation or feedback. Others, usually, the less athletic students who struggle with physical fitness, do.
“It’s the kids who this doesn’t come as easy for who need to experience success and get some feedback as to what they’re really doing,” Dunlop said.
Dunlop uses his IHT software to set a goal for each student to achieve a certain percentage of class time exercising at moderate or vigorous heart rate levels. The Centers for Disease Control set minimum guidelines for minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity that children ages 5-18 should get every day. IHT’s philosophy for PE focuses on maximizing the minutes of MVPA students achieve in each class.
Connecting with Students Who Traditionally Don’t Enjoy PE Class
Because each student’s heart rate is specific to his or her physiology, the monitor gives Dunlop an accurate picture of who’s barely working, who’s working hard and who might be working too hard.
Students see the goal before class starts and they see how they did immediately after class when they return their heart rate monitors. For some, he said, the results are eye-opening. Dunlop recalls vividly when a student who rarely tried in his class wore the monitor for the first time…and achieved that day’s goal.
“I saw a complete change in his attitude, especially at the end of class when he’s downloading and looking at his data,” Dunlop said. “He said, ‘hey, I did pretty good today.’ I don’t know if that kid has ever experienced success in PE until this year.”
Dunlop’s not alone. In Wyoming at Baldwin Creek Elementary School, teacher Misty Atnip also saw students rejoice after experiencing success for the first time. She recalls one student with weight management issues who tried to stay in the shadows and only went through the motions during class. Then she introduced the IHT ZONE heart rate monitor.
“He can’t wait to check his and see if he hit the goal,” Atnip said. “He almost always does and now he leaves the gym feeling good about himself.”
Using Heart Rate Monitors to Improve Student Accountability
Once students start meeting – or beating – their daily goals, they want to keep doing it. Teachers still can’t focus on every student in class at every moment, so they rely on the heart rate monitor to create an extra level of accountability for students.
“The heart rate monitors add accountability,” now-retired Lewiston (Id.) High School PE teacher Chris Meyer said after adding IHT ZONE monitors to her program. “I love that they can see the goal when they scan their heart rate monitors in. It’s a great tool to talk to them about their workout, ‘okay, last class what did you do and how did you feel and what can you do differently today?’”
Students begin to better understand what their current fitness level will allow them to do – how hard they can work while keeping their heart rate in the target heart rate zone. Once they know that, they become more willing to work at improving their fitness.
“Kids get to participate at the level they are at and I think that’s been a big piece for us,” Little Falls (Minn.) Middle School PE teacher Nick Abbott said. “With the monitors, I’ve found that more kids are willing to put themselves out there and figure out what is hard work.”
Creating a Lifelong Passion for Physical Activity
The positive feedback and good feelings do more than empower students to keep trying in their PE classes. Teachers hope – and some are finding out – that students develop a passion for fitness and begin to make behavioral changes that will carry through into adulthood.
Glen Crest Middle School (Ill.) teacher Kelly Nordlund tries to give her students a real-world experience by pairing heart rate monitors with different types of workouts that students may choose as adults. She wants them to find an exercise regimen – weight training, circuit training, walking, running, etc – that they enjoy so they are more likely to stick with it in the future.
“Whatever you’re doing, if you’re enjoying it you’re more likely to do it in your adult life or just out of school,” she said. “And that’s kind of the whole point, right? Fitness for life and be healthy for your whole life.”
Along with the activities her students can choose from, Nordlund also aims to incorporate types of workouts students see their parents doing.
“We try to relate the value of this to the kids,” she said. “Their parents spend thousands of dollars a year going to health clubs and classes and working out, and you are getting it for free in your school day. I want to hit home with them how important their health is, the lifelong aspect of this. In this day and age, it’s so easy to sit still and play video games or be on your phone. That’s what I’m really hoping they take away from our classes – the importance of getting active and staying active.”
Boost Student Emotional Health with IHT ZONE heart rate monitors:
