Bernessa Arama, the junior teacher at Whangaruru School tried something new in 2015, from the start of the year, her class did fitness every morning. The results were phenomenal, both outside and inside the classroom.

Every morning the class of 18 students aged five to nine (only five girls!) would undertake 10-20 minutes of fitness. This started with three to four  warm ups which were about 2 minutes each and then into 5-8 short, sharp two minute endurance activities. With support from Sport Northland Energizer, Jen Steele, and the help of the Kiwidex manual, Whaea Bernessa says “it is amazing to have great resources and a variety or exercises, it’s great to be able to mix it up and make it challenging fun and exciting for the kids”.

After fitness, the class head inside to have a sit down, have their fruit and milk for the day and say morning karakia. Bernessa says “this is such a positive environment to be in. It does take a bit longer in the morning to do some fitness and then have a snack but it has paid off so much in the classroom. Once the morning part is done, the class maintain their learning focus for the rest of the day”.

So what else has changed? Bernessa has found so many in class benefits. During fitness, students who have already finished will go and join the last runners and run with them to help encourage them, and cheer them along. This has improved team spirit, working together, positive language and encouraging each other. The less able students are now finding they can be leaders and achieve. One new entrant in particular who wouldn’t participate at all is now a fitness leader. Being a leader has lifted his ability and enthusiasm.

The fitness programme has helped students who have had behavioural problems in the past to challenge themselves physically and Bernessa now uses less behaviour talk within the classroom, with discussion more around learning. Bernessa found that attention spans were longer and students would settle into routines better and maintain this throughout the day.  If there is no huff puff time in the morning, there was more behaviour talk in the classroom, the children were off task a lot more, and Bernessa spent more time trying to get her class concentrating.

The motivation of the students also improved, there was huge improvement from the beginning of the year. At the start of year there were about three children who would come after fitness time as they were afraid of it and by the end of the year they would fully participate. One boy who used to cry because he was last, became more physical than he had ever been, always playing outside, and requesting his favourite games. This motivation comes with good attitudes towards fitness, with the children telling Whaea Bernessa when they are not huffing and puffing and need to do some more.

The daily fitness routine was also found to improve goal setting and problem solving, encouraging students not to give up and challenge themselves. There was one boy in the class who is a great endurance runner and anyone who wants to challenge themselves, would try to run with him so he is their gauge of their fitness. Over the year, children became enthusiastic and eager with children often requesting fitness in the mornings. If an activity was found to not work for the class, the students were encouraged to use their problem solving skills to come up with a solution.

Through daily fitness, there was also the introduction of rules, what is a rule and why they are needed. After a weeklong focus, staff could hear students in the playground, playing games and saying what the rules are and that we need to have rules so we can all have fun. There was lots of learning talk out in the playground and the three expectations of the school – be kind, be responsible and be a great individual - were always being linked to their problem solving in the games that they play in the playground.

Check out this short video of some of the students in action - https://youtu.be/5NjCUaDaXns