Group+PhysEd+Heart+Rate+Monitoring

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Heart Rate Monitoring

What is heart rate monitoring?
Heart rate monitoring is a fun, new and interesting way for children to measure the rate of your heart after particular activities. It builds a basic knowledge and understanding of the human heart and cardiovascular fitness, and knowing the difference between your heart rate after no movement and after fitness or excercise. It is a new way to build awareness of the importance of fitness and is great for promoting health to children in their schools and homes.

What are the benefits?
There are many advantages for learning how to accurately monitor your heart rate. Not only does it create awareness of healthy heart fitness for children, it also will teach kids how to locate a pulse- which would become extremely beneficial in the future or now, and learning techniques for counting heart beats helps children learn how exercise can affect their heart rate. The heart rate monitoring activity would be most beneficial conducted various times, over an extended period of time, so that the students can see the importance and will be continuously reminded how exercise does affect their bodies. The activity is a great way to promote students to live a healthy lifestyle.

Activity One- Locating a pulse: Running on the spot

Equipment & technology required:
-Stopwatch or a watch with a second hand

Steps:
1.) Divide the PhysEd class up into groups of five and hand each group a stopwatch to share. 2.) Explain to the class that today you will be monitoring your heart rate and seeing what the difference is after certain fitness activities. 3.) Have the children and yourself run on the spot for 5 minutes, using the stop watch to time. Before they start running, go around to each group and show them how to locate the carotid artery in their neck. 4.) After 5 minutes of running on the spot, have the children feel for their pulse in their neck. Ask them what it feels like, how fast it feels like it's going and how strong? 5.) Have the children feel your neck/pulse as well. Tell them to take mental note of the difference between an adult's pulse and their own. For example, the adult's should be slower than the children's. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif;">6.) Have the children repeat the excercise for 1 minute only now, using the stopwatch to time. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif;">7.) Now get them to feel for their pulse in their wrist. This lets them know that it is possible to feel a pulse in more than one place.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">8.) Next have the children sit and rest for 15 minute, until their pulse is back to a normal resting rate. While the children are resting, explain to them what is happening, that their heart rate is now slowing back down as they are no longer excercising. This will show them that there is a difference between their heart rate when at resting point and when moving. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">9.) Allow the children to find their pulse again either in their neck or wrist, and tell them to count how many times it pulses for 1 minute. This will determine the resting rate.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Resting Rate: **

<span style="display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 210%; text-align: center;">Activity Two- Calculating their heart rate: <span style="display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 210%; text-align: center;">Jump rope & trampoline

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">-Stopwatch or a watch with a second hand <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">-Skipping ropes <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">-Mini fitness trampolines
 * <span style="color: #a4517b; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 140%;">Equipment & technology required: **

<span style="color: #a4517b; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Steps:
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.) Hand out the required equpiment to the children. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2.) Explain to the class that again you will be monitring their heart rate, but with a different fitness activity. This will show them the difference of their heart rate between various sporting activities. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3.) Remind the class where they are able to locate their pulse (If they may have forgotten, if activity two is conducted on a different day), on their neck or wrist. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4.) Time the children with the stopwatch for 10 minutes while they jump the rope. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">5.) After 10 minutes, have the children feel for their pulse immediately after the excercise. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">6.) Tell them to count for their pulse, timing them for 1 minute. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">7.) Record their pulse every 5 minutes, to see how long it takes to get back to a resting point heart rate. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">8.) Discuss with the class, how long it took for everyone to get back down to a resting point rate and how fast their pulse felt immediately after the jump rope. Was it faster or slower than after running on the spot, etc?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Jump Rope: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.) Have the students jump on the trampolines timing them for 10 minutes. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2.) After the 10 minutes, have the children feel for their pulse (again reminding them how to if they may have forgotten), immediately after they get off the trampolines. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3.) Have them count for their pulse for 1 minute. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">4.) Next, have the children sit and rest for 10 minutes. The children then should feel for and record their pulse at resting point. Note that all heart rates should go back to a normal resting point time during the 10 minutes resting time. Keep in mind that it varies for everyone, so don't be too concerned if someone's resting point heart rate takes a little slower than others. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">5.) Discuss as a class the differences between everyone's heart rates and the differences between the varying activities. Make sure you make it clear to the students that there is a distinct different of heart rate straight after activity and at resting point.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Trampoline: **

<span style="color: #a4517b; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Useful resources for teachers:
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">@http://www.livestrong.com/article/76724-heart-rate-information-kids/
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Website: **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The URL above is from LIVESTRONG.COM (2012), would be a useful resource for teachers as there is a list of neccessary and important facts about heart rates. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">During the resting time in the activities, the teacher could take the opportunity to educate the students about the heart, pulses and the process of measuring heart rates. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The facts are simple enough for year 4 students to comprehend with the aid of the teacher.


 * Journal Article:**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Above is pdf download of a journal article called: <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This resource would be useful for a teacher in PhysEd class in regard to heart rate monitoring because it is an insightful article to help teachers fully understand the importance of physical education class and providing education about heart rate monitoring. If the teacher knows what they are talking about, then he/she will have a successful PhysEd lesson!
 * The importance of physical education classes in pre-school children //by [|Vale, Susana] ; [|Santos, Rute] ; [|Soares-Miranda, Luísa] ; [|Silva, Pedro] ; [|Mota, Jorge] // ||