As the PE teacher at Mabry Middle School, Chad Oates needed a resource in his classroom capable of engaging and enriching their student's content mastery while motivating increased physical activity intensity and collaboration.
Prior to Heart Zones, it was almost impossible to utilize instructional strategies that created commonality amongst all types of students.
Heart Zones makes it possible to elevate Mabry’s HPE instructional framework and utilize high-effective instructional strategies that support maximum student achievement amongst a variety of diverse students. Heart Zones even assists with advancing future classroom content and increasing teacher effectiveness.
What I like most about using Heart Zones is being able to refocus my time, attention, and efforts on teaching rather than crowd control.
Mabry Middle School’s HPE program includes student athletes, students who love to move, and many types of other learners. The implementation of Heart Zones at Mabry Middle has provided alignment and commonality for all students in Health and PE. Heart Zones personalizes individual student learning in real-time while simultaneously allowing our program to accommodate various learning needs.
By adding Heart Zones to our PE program, we have seen an increase in student motivation, cognitive skills, and even laps for the pacer test.
How Mabry students use Heart Zones dataThe HPE program at Mabry Middle uses Heart Zones as a resource that supports daily grading, streamlines data driven student and parent communication, monitors overall program progress, assist with lesson scaffolding, and prioritizes financial purchases.
Using Heart Zones’ data has enhanced my instructional planning, both vertically and horizontally, supporting maximum student achievement.
Heart Zones produces reports that extend and enrich learning. Chad loves how Heart Zones’ alignment with standard based learning creates accountability components which are measured and monitored during instructional work sessions. For him, using Heart Zones’ data has enhanced his instructional planning, both vertically and horizontally, while concentrating and reinforcing best practices that support maximum student achievement.
"You're ahead of your time"
"Excellent work for using data to support decisions"
Chad Oates, Tim Graber, & Brooke Anderson
Mabry’s HPE program has been praised for “being ahead of their time” for how the program uses data to track lesson effectiveness, personalizing student learning through the building of automated student portfolios, and being able to use targeted data to create meaningful learning experiences for all students. According to Chad, Heart Zones has advanced his ability to serve as a subject area expert. It also supports his classroom culture which allows him to lead with more positivity, extend learning, and customize detailed feedback.
We have integrated Heart Zones so that our PE class is student-centered and student-led.
Since the implementation of Heart Zones in Mabry’s HPE program, when students complete our program, they showcase the skills required to design balanced physical activity plans and participate in a variety of activities that incorporate intensity guidelines, time allocations, and desired goals. Student portfolios elevate student accountability and showcase student learning over years through personalized data driven artifacts. Student portfolios can be referenced during student feedback, administrative conferences, and parent meetings.
Catch a glimpse below of how the Mabry Middle School students feel about using Heart Zones during PE. These quotes reflect that students care, are intrinsically motivated, and are learning how to monitor individual effort while attaching that to specific activities.
According to Chad, the comment from a student enjoying an activity was unique because they had done the activity before but using Heart Zones created a realistic learning environment that contributed to expanding student interests and growing their desire to be life-long learners. He has noticed that students now are intrinsically motivated and are learning how to monitor individual effort while attaching that to specific activities.
What challenges have you faced with Heart Zones?
I have not had any challenges with the organization. I have encountered colleagues who do not believe in the value of Heart Zones in PE; which is both sad and unfortunate. A couple non-Heart Zones specific issues but related, occasionally the internet goes out at school preventing a report from being generated and creating an efficient system for heart rate monitor distribution took collaborative and intentional planning.
How were you able to secure the funding?
Multiple grants (local and state) were submitted and approved as well as some department fundraising. Heart Zones data collections make grant writing effective and efficient. Most of our Heart Zones system were purchased as a result of approved grants; we use 80 heart rate monitors in PE and another 30+ in our Fitness/Health; as a department over 110 heart rate monitors per class period.
How can Heart Zones help support you more?
The support is awesome! 5-star! As Heart Zones continues to grow and evolve it would be cool if they developed a heart rate monitor that has a screen which allows one-way communication from teacher to student during activity sessions.
Chad Oates
Email: chadoates@gmail.com
Chad has been teaching since 2008. He has also serves as the department head and intramural coordinator. He has experience with multiple districts, K-12 settings, adapted PE and gen ed PE. Chad is currently a doctoral student and is using Heart Zones as part of his thesis!
He welcomes any and all health and physical education instructors and leaders to reach out to learn more about how he incorporates Heart Zones technology into his PE program.
Chad welcomes interested teachers to reach out if they'd like to visit to see all these PE tech tools in action at Mabry Middle School in Marietta, GA.