Abstract to Action Research Project

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 6^th graders only.  In 2010-2011, we tested the 6^th graders and the 7^th graders as well.  Finally, in 2011-2012 all 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade students were tested.  There were three main objectives; compare students’ fitness levels from grade to grade, compare 6^th 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 6^th grade class has fewer students entering the healthy fitness zone than the year before.  It was also found that there are more 8^th graders in the healthy fitness zone than 7^th or 6^th graders.  However, when the same class was followed from 6^th grade to 8^th 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.