Harmony's Fifth Grade Exit Project
by Meghan Fauth

Healthy choices are increasingly crucial as students become more independent. Students are allowed more choices and more freedom to make their own decisions as they reach middle school, high school, college, and eventually "full-blown-all-on-your-own-adulthood!" It goes by too quickly as many of us know, so as teachers, how can we influence some of the important choices we all eventually have to make? These include choices about our health, our eating habits, and exercise routines, etc. Sometimes decisions seem so short term: "Am I going to go to the gym today?" or "Apple or Snickers bar?" The truth is these decisions are very much the opposite. These types of decisions have long term consequences, and healthy choices need to be taught early in life to help create good habits and wise decision making skills when it comes to personal health.

Dan Mertz is the Harmony Elementary Physical Education Specialist and the Evergreen Elementary Physical Education Curriculum Coordinator in Vancouver, Washington. Dan helped create the Exit Project for fifth graders to help prepare them for middle school. Due to the project's huge success, funds were made available to invite other schools to participate. So, Alice Atha, the PE Specialist at Riverview Elementary School in Vancouver, added the project to her curriculum last year. Both Dan and Alice presented on the Exit Project at the WAHPERD State Conference last fall. Approximately 250 fifth grade students at Harmony and Riverview Elementary Schools are involved in the project, and they hope to have more schools join in soon.

The main goal of the Exit Project is to help students become acquainted with, and have respect for, their food choices and their physical health. The students are also learning how to apply physical health and fitness concepts into many areas of their lives and education. The project is multi-faceted, and one that children are required to complete before they are allowed to move to the next grade level. The 6 goals the students work toward include:

1. Be literate
2. Work effectively with others
3. Develop healthy self-esteem
4. Be informed, concerned, and productive citizens
5. Apply thinking skills
6. Be self-directed learners

The students work towards these goals by completing all the lessons and activities required to finish the project. The Exit Project not only helps the students reach these goals, but it is student centered making it relevant and fun. The students do many activities that teach important concepts. Here are a few of the concepts and activities:

• Responsible decision making
• Positive self-talk
• Food-Pyramid and healthy eating
• Reading food labels
• "What is Exercise?"
• Exploring the scientific method
• Making a graph
• Researching and summarizing an article from the internet
• Writing a bibliography
• Revisiting selected lessons from the previously taught "Here's Looking At You 2000" Drug and Alcohol Awareness program
• Learn the process of scientific inquiry by choosing a question, completing research, forming a hypothesis, designing and performing an investigation, collecting data, analyzing their findings, and stating a conclusion about how their findings apply to their life or other real world situations.

Some of the students' daily activities include wearing a pedometer during the school hours, and logging miles completed on an excel spreadsheet. The teachers have individual nutrition plans for the students to teach about the importance of movement and healthy eating habits. Parents have reported about positive changes at home. Some of these include the students making healthier food choices on their own, asking their parents to make healthier meals and snacks, and becoming more active in their free time by choosing physical activity over TV. The parents have been thrilled with the results, and are giving very good feedback to the school.

As you can see, this project requires students' developing higher level thinking skills. This really helps prepare them for standardized tests and the continuation of education at the college level. When analyzed with Bloom's Taxonomy (which categorizes levels of thinking for students and their assignments) this project covers all 6 levels. The levels are (from lowest to highest):

1. Knowledge: memorization
2. Comprehension: summarization
3. Application: using the skill
4. Analysis: breaking something down and studying the components
5. Synthesis: merging 2 or more things that don’t seem related
6. Evaluation: judging something through a stated or expressed criteria

Incorporating lessons that make use of all 6 levels helps stretch the student's brains and challenge their thinking.

The Exit Project is integrated into many subjects, such as reading, writing, math, science, and mental health. All of the teachers work together to make the projects meaningful, useful, and to help them come alive for the students. The students' daily lives have been changed as they use this project in all areas of learning. The fifth graders begin to understand that they need to focus on health as a whole. It's not just physical activity or just good eating habits. Healthy choices need to be incorporated into every choice we make. This project really amplifies for the students how to make those choices for themselves.

The following is part of a recent interview with Dan Mertz about the Exit Project.

What kind of feedback do you get from parents?
    Dan: "Positive – students want healthy meals at home."

Do the students enjoy working on their projects?
    Dan: "Yes, it is real life to them and very hands on."

Do they present the projects at the end? If so, how do they do it?
    Dan: "We display projects at our curriculum night."

Do you see any results (immediate or long term) in the students improving their wellness?
   Dan: "Better snack choices and more engaged in movement activities."

How does this project help the students prepare for life after school (i.e. citizenship)?
    Dan: "Knowledge on how to live a healthy life."

How has teaching this unit personally impacted your teaching?
     Dan: "I am supporting the classroom teachers, and they are supporting me in health and fitness."

Has there been more group planning among the teachers of your school?
    Dan: "It has helped me to collaborate more with classroom teachers, and they in turn support what I am doing."

How has it affected the teachers at Harmony Elementary School?
    Dan: "Teaming."

Have you made any modifications to the project?
    Dan: "Small modifications from year to year to make it better."

How long are you planning on keeping this project going?
    Dan: "As long as possible. Hopefully we can expand it to many schools in the district."

What advice can you give me, as an aspiring teacher that is interested in doing this in my classroom?

Dan: "Find one teacher to team with and others will follow. This program can be done easily in every school district. It can be modified to use with older or younger students. Health begins at the beginning of life and doesn’t ever quite being a part of our lives until the end. It shouldn’t be taught separately, it should be incorporated in to all teaching. The best part is that you don’t have to be an “athletic” person to do this project."

For more information please contact:

Dan Mertz, Harmony Elementary School, dmertz@egreen.wednet.edu
Alice Atha, Riverview Elementary School, aatha@egreen.wednet.edu

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