AEROBICS INSTRUCTORS Kory J. McMahon Mott Road Elementary School Fayetteville, NY   This is a great activity for your rhythms or fitness unit for third or fourth graders! It allows students to be creative, cooperate in a group, teach their peers, exercise, and have fun while following some basic guidelines. It is also a great assessment tool to measure understanding of moving to a specific beat. Before the activity begins it is important to stress cooperation, and being a good listener. The class is broken down into groups of four or five students per group (depending on your class size). Each group will get a chance to lead the rest of the class through an exercise routine that they construct. A sheet is given to each group listing two types of stationary activities they are allowed to perform. Six activities are slow moving warm-up and stretch movements: bounce in place walk in place stand and stretch to the side stand and touch toes and sit and touch toes Eight activities are faster moving and more difficult exercises jumping jacks run in place jump and clap push ups crunches pretend jump rope in place ski jumps push up position/running legs Each group picks two choices from both lists. After deciding which four activities to do, the groups are given practice time to organized their routine to the music. If they choose to, they may pick a leader for their group. The leader usually takes responsibility for signaling when to switch movements during the routine. Groups can repeat the four choices over and over, or just go through each movement one time. After the practice time is over, groups are chosen at random to present their routine for the rest of the class to follow. They stand in front of the class and when the music starts, EXERCISE! After about minute, or when they are finished, the group sits down. We usually give a short round of applause and catch our breath before the next group is chosen. Once all the groups have presented their routines, we sit everyone down and talk about the activity. We talk about the importance of daily exercise, and many of the benefits received. We stress how it takes courage to stand in front of everyone and present. We also recognize effort and teamwork, and praise creativity from the various routines. The students enjoyed having the chance to lead the class, and had a lot of fun exercising throughout. For more information, contact Kory

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