In the Zone Issue 7 / Fall 2022
Learning New SEL Skills … and Unpacking New PE Equipment! CHAD SWEENEY Physical Education Teacher, Lincoln Trail Elementary School (Elizabethtown, KY)
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teach both primary and intermediate grade levels at Lincoln Trail Elementary. For the past two years, I have used the health. moves. minds.® curriculum in my classes. Last year, I decided to also do a health. moves. minds. Fundraiser. In November, to coordinate with Kentucky SHAPE’s Kindness Across the Commonwealth initiative, we introduced the health. moves. minds. SEL curriculum. I shared the SEL lessons with faculty so they could be a part of it. Our thirdgrade team really hit a homerun on being grateful when they had students write letters to family members who are veterans. For deeper involvement with the SEL lessons, I used the Mindful Minute and the parachute lesson. We also did kindness-style rock, paper, scissors; when students won, they shared an emotional experience relating to those development characteristics that are in the health. moves. minds. curriculum. I think the SEL resources really helped students transition from PE to their classroom. They practiced the breathing and getting calm before heading back to class, which was a big positive. We emphasized the 2021-2022 health. moves. minds. theme, POWered by Kindness, in November when we were completing the SEL lessons and again during the fundraiser, which was later in the year. I would ask the kids to share their experiences when they are happy and when they are sad and
Lincoln Trail Elementary students wrote letters to veterans as a gratitude activity.
Students who raised at least $100 got to participate in the “PE equipment unboxing,” which was even covered by the local newspaper.
let them know it is important to share their emotions. I also taught my students that if they talk to another student who shares how they are feeling, it’s important to get permission from that student before sharing that information with others.
Fundraising Success
The health. moves. minds.® Fundraiser brings together the lessons, activities, and community-building ideas that help students live their best life. You can share your success with health. moves. minds. — and bring national attention to your school — by contributing to In the Zone! If interested, email healthmovesminds@shapeamerica.org.
For our school’s fundraising event, we did a “move-a-thon,” where students were encouraged to complete 60 minutes of exercise a day, either in school or at home, and keep a log of their activities. The fundraising was really big for us with countless examples of how it helped our community. (continued on page 4)
Learn more and register at healthmovesminds.org
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fundraising focus School Success Stories
French Road Elementary School ROCHESTER, NY
Total Raised: $19,267.57
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n 2021-2022, our school completed our second year of participating in a health. moves. minds. Fundraiser. This philanthropy project has been a seamless fit into our community, and the givebacks of the program are all of equal value to us. Having an increase in PE-specific budget money from the Gopher gift cards (more than $4,800 this year!) helps us feel more creative and freer with our curriculum. Whether we're replacing old and weathered equipment or buying something new, it motivates us to see where our teaching can take us. What feels the most special to me, however, is being able to support a charity through the health. moves. minds. Fundraiser. Our school district believes in community and philanthropy, so being able to choose a local organization to give back to allows the kids to see the actual benefits of their fundraising. This year we partnered with Pencils & Paper, a program which provides free school supplies to Rochester-area teachers for their classrooms and students. We chose to “pay it forward” by sharing 25% of the funds we raised with this local charity, for a donation of $4,816.89. French Road students felt proud knowing
Simle Middle School BISMARCK, ND
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Total Raised: $1,300
they had a hand in helping other schools through their fundraising efforts. As we integrated the health. moves. minds. lessons and activities and completed the fundraiser, we shared with the As the Top Champion School for 2021-2022, school community French Road Elementary received a special video shout-out from SHAPE America CEO Stephanie that we were Morris! View here. benefiting from the social-emotional resources and new PE equipment, while also giving back to a charity. The pride that our students feel from participating will hopefully make them wonder what else they can possibly do with their friends and family to help others and earn that pride again!
LEAH WHEELING | Physical Education Teacher
imle Middle School participated in our third health. moves. minds. Fundraiser in 2021-2022. It was exciting to raise our largest amount yet — $1,300! The students were empowered to be successful with their donations and class participation. Because our students are part of many fundraisers (fine arts, sports, etc.), I wanted to make sure they really understood where donations were going and the impact of their generosity. In addition to the health. moves. minds. T-shirt incentive, I added another incentive: an Olympic-themed physical education uniform shirt for students who raised $10. The Olympic uniform shirts (which tied into our event theme) were preordered, so we had limited availability. However, both incentives led to instant gratification and huge momentum at the start — and engagement throughout the fundraiser. For our Olympic-themed event at the end of February, all students participated in a round-robin tournament of seven different activities from units completed earlier in the year. We kept a visual goal thermometer of our donations and
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KRYSTAL FORSYTH | Health and Physical Education Teacher
congratulated all donors on the day of the event. Staff participated as well, adding an additional level of fun and impact. Next year, I plan on making a few changes to grow our fundraiser Physical educator Leah even more, such as: utilizing the Wheeling helped spread online fundraising platform, bringing “Olympic-sized kindness” through her middle school back after-school free will donation with health. moves. minds. tournaments, and moving the event into late March for March Madness. (Previous events have been more successful when tied to that theme.) To ensure that the concept of health. moves. minds. becomes integrated into our school — and not just “one more thing” we need to do — we use the curriculum throughout the year. We also post the health. moves. minds. vocabulary terms on the wall and include them with many activities. This helps it become part of the culture and how we achieve a healthy lifestyle together.
Learn more and register at healthmovesminds.org
n this issue, we’re shining a spotlight on Megan Baker of Belton Middle School in Belton, MO, and Jordan Werner of Riverside Elementary School in Grants Pass, OR. They are both doing great work with health. moves. minds.!
Peer-to-Peer Activities and Positive Impact Megan Baker (Missouri) In leading health. moves. minds. for the last couple of years, I’ve found that it brings so much awareness and change because the curriculum teaches mindfulness, stress management, and wellness — and the fundraising component teaches service learning.
Jordan Werner (Oregon) Last year was my first year hosting a health. moves. minds. Fundraiser at my school, which is all free/reduced meals. I chose health. moves. minds. because we need resources to help with de-escalation and self-regulation, while focusing on kindness and helping others. I also wanted to raise money for more active seating or rainy-day recess equipment to help students be more active in classrooms. I’m proud to say we raised $1,915 in donations and received a Gopher gift card in the amount of $1,053.25.
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state spotlights I
Kindness Prevails
In my classes, I used the emoji rating scale, Mindful Minute, Kindful Minute, and Better Breathing. The Mindful Minute was also used as a school-wide lesson — so now if anyone mentions a Mindful Minute, everyone knows what it is. Every grade level participated in different kindness activities: Kindergarten students wrote letters to family about being kind, one class did a park clean-up, third graders gave a “being kind slip” whenever they saw another student being kind, and the fifth graders decorated a district office with kindness messages.
Our district really liked the program’s focus on being kind. I also found that it changed the way I teach — and it was useful for parents. One parent shared that there was a day when she was really upset at home and her son said, “Mom, you need to take a Mindful Minute.” He then showed her how to do it and it really made her feel better!
missouri
At our middle school we really incorporated our student council. They made posters and went into classrooms during advisory to do student-led lesson from health. moves. minds., which made it more seamless, impactful, and relevant for everyone. Our students also loved taking selfies with our “wings of kindness” in the hallways and doing kindness activities while eating breakfast in the classroom. Whether it was making classroom posters or bookmarks to place in the library, students loved sharing positive health. moves. minds. messages with their peers.
Amplify Kindness in Your School This Year While raising $$$ for HPE!
The feedback in our school community has been positive, and our school culture has improved, with more random acts of kindness and more inclusion. The most impactful feedback I have is that we have a student who uses a wheelchair and is very limited in any physical activity she can do. She got to be involved and appreciated the inclusion and kindness discussion. It really helped her be more open with other students. Also, she was the highest fundraiser and got to “pie” a teacher!
Learn more and register at healthmovesminds.org
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Learning New SEL Skills … and Unpacking New PE Equipment! (continued from page 1) We really came together to reach our goal, which was initially $4,000. We finished with a total of $4,145 and received $2,279.75 back in a Gopher gift card, which we used to select and purchase new PE equipment. It was amazing to see the success of the fundraiser! One of our fundraising incentives (which I announced around our 100th day of school) was that any student who raised $100 would get to come in and unveil the new PE equipment when it arrived. When the fundraiser was complete and our new PE equipment arrived, two of our teacher assistants wrapped each item up like a present and let the students unwrap everything, which made it really special. I even invited the local newspaper to come and they ended up publishing a story about it! We also had some other incentives, which were gradeappropriate and did not take away from instructional time. The primary and intermediate students were given the option of having a Hat Day or Extra PE Day as a reward for achieving a certain donation level — and both groups of students chose Extra PE Day. One really big thing I realized was it’s good to plan incentives ahead of time, but it’s also fine to add an incentive in the middle of the fundraiser, which is what I did. When I thought we might not reach our fundraising
These Lincoln Trail Elementary Team Member Champions had fun — and they really liked the health. moves. minds. T-shirts!
goal, I reached out to a really committed parent who always supports us. I told him I would shave our school’s initials, “LTES,” on my head if he would donate the remaining amount to reach our goal. He made the donation — and I had the local barber shave “LTES” on my head. We really had a lot of fun with it. Throughout the fundraising event, we really saw our students’ advocacy skills at work as they learned how to ask for something. It was a classroom effort, and everyone wanted to be supportive — helping raise money for new PE equipment while also learning more about SEL. I think our students, teachers and community learned a lot and we really appreciated getting so much back for new PE equipment.
Help students embrace a variety of emotions with PEmoji equipment and banners!
PEmoji Coated-Foam Balls
ReflectED Wall Chart $24.95
Rainbow BagMoji $34.95
Explore nervous, happy, disgusted, sad, surprised, and angry emojis in a colorful Rainbow Set. $109
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Learn more and register at healthmovesminds.org