Team Marathon Tom Winiecki Mott Road Elementary School Fayetteville, NY  This is a great warm up activity that will take a few weeks to accomplish. By using a pulse monitor (or by having the students manually take their own pulse), you can begin to reinforce the notion of proper exercise intensity to your students. Your students will feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when they finish. To begin, you will need to divide your classes into groups of 4-5. These teams then are responsible for coming up with an appropriate name for themselves. One year a group wanted to be called the "winners." I didn't allow this. When I asked them what everyone else would be if they were the "winners," they understood. Gr. 3-4 Equipment needed: Cones (5) Scrap paper Pencils Pulse monitor (1) Stop watch (1) Team Marathon Explain marathon: 26 mile running race that takes Olympic runners about 2 hours to run We will be running a marathon in class (not all in one day!) We will be doing it in a team All will run around the jogging course and count your own laps As teacher, you need to figure out how many laps equals 1/4 of a mile... When time is up, you will add up your laps with the members of your team to get a "team total" That total is marked on the chart each day you have class When your team gets to the finish line, you are not done You will continue to run laps each day in an attempt to get the other teams to the finish line. We "win" the race if all of the teams from all of the classes reach the finish line by a pre determined date. Teacher will stand by the door and count the laps of the leader Teacher won't say who the leader is or how many laps they have Anyone that tells an incorrect number of laps run costs their team a "double penalty" If they don't tell the truth about their total laps, their team is penalized twice the mistake If the leader ran 10 laps and someone says that they ran 12 laps, they only get credit for 6 laps (12-10=2 laps difference x 2 = 4, 10-4=6 laps total) Teams will add up their totals on scrap paper They are also responsible for their math Penalties are the same as above: If the team members ran laps of 8, 8, 9, 7 their total would be 32 If they said that they ran 35 laps, they would be penalized 6 laps (35-32=3. 3x2=6 laps) Also, after the time is up each day, one student will be given a hand held pulse monitor If their heart rate is in the target zone (150-180) they will earn the entire class a free mile/team! If they don't hit the "target," they will not lose any laps they ran, they just won't get the free miles.

Back