Middle School Fitness Levels Dropping: Are this year’s students in worse
shape than previous years?
Abstract
Childhood
obesity is a major concern in today’s society.
With this in mind, I decided to create a 3 year school initiative to
observe student fitness levels and patterns and so I can make changes in order
to improve physical fitness. All
students involved in this initiative were from Memorial
Middle School in Fair Lawn, NJ.
The
students were given a set of four physical fitness tests designed by the
Fitnessgram assessment program (1999), a standardized fitness test, to test
their physical fitness. These tests were
administered by four teachers certified in health and physical education. The students were assessed on upper body
strength/endurance (push-up test), abdominal strength/endurance (curl-up test),
cardiovascular endurance (mile run), and a Progressive
Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (20 meter PACER test). The students were tested in November (fall)
and then again in April (Spring).
The
testing started in 2009-2010 with the 6th graders only. In 2010-2011, we tested the 6th
graders and the 7th graders as well.
Finally, in 2011-2012 all 6th, 7th, and 8th
grade students were tested. There were
three main objectives; compare students’ fitness levels from grade to grade,
compare 6th graders for the past for the past 3 years, and compare
the same student body as they progress from year to year. Other factors that are noted are the
differences between boys’ and girls’ performance, and the differences in
performances from the fall testing to the spring testing.
The study showed that each upcoming 6th
grade class has fewer students entering the healthy fitness zone than the year
before. It was also found that there are
more 8th graders in the healthy fitness zone than 7th or
6th graders. However, when
the same class was followed from 6th grade to 8th grade,
the amount of students in the healthy fitness zone decreased each year. On most tests,
for each grade, for both genders, there was an improvement in the amount of
students in the healthy fitness zone from fall to spring testing. Finally,
there were typically a higher percentage of girls in the healthy fitness zone
than boys throughout all grades.
