MVPA IS ONE OF THE BEST Teacher Performance Tools
As a department head, leader or individual teacher, one of your goals is to develop and support an effective physical education program. One of the best ways of accomplishing that goal is to incorporate the use of wearable fitness technology like heart rate and step tracking sensors for Smart PE. By using Heart Zones Move or Heart Zones ePE into your program, you can accomplish this goal by providing meaningful data that can be used in setting professional goals for everyone in your program, for students and teachers.
Setting meaningful program performance goals is critical for any organization. Teacher performance is no different and should be devised in observable, measurable and reliable terms. Setting relevant goals keeps HPE teachers focused on the desired outcomes and provides a clear direction for success. The key to establishing goals is to use of data that is objective and relevant. Using technology to capture student activity time during class is one component that can be used in setting your performance goals for teachers to select appropriate content, assess student performance, maximize use of instructional time and facilitate accountability. The use of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) time as an indicator of teacher and student performance provides a platform, a technological way for the collection and systematic use of real time data.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommend that Children 6-18 participate in 60 minutes of MVPA daily. Further, the CDC recommends that students engage in MVPA for at least 50% of their physical education class . So how would students know about MVPA? Using Heart Zones technology, teachers have a tool to ensure that students know what MVPA is and whether this goal is being accomplished. Are your students reaching these levels of active participation? Are your teachers focused on this goal of providing instruction that provides the opportunity for students to be moderately to vigorously physically active for 50% of their class time?
Both the Heart Zones Move and Heart Zones ePE solutions captures MVPA as a data point. This data is displayed on our “Big Board” tiles as a percentage. When students are above the prescribed 50% MVPA percentage a white burst appears behind the percentage number. This percentage is live data that is captured and displayed in real time. MVPA data can be used to motivate and further engage your students. Social attributes such as Best Effort, Personal Responsibility, Cooperation and Team Work can be tied to the data collected. Information that is captured on longitudinal reports in our Heart Zones Connect web portal for analysis. Both administrators and teachers can view this robust data at any time, facilitating the accomplishment of meaningful and measurable goals.
While the performance reports of each student is useful when individualizing instruction and providing authentic assessment, teachers also should devise smart performance goals for themselves. Using the Heart Zones Move solution teachers can track the aggregate data for all students in their class. The Class Average Summary Data screen and report captures this information. This aggregate data tool allows teachers and administrators to assess the effectiveness of lesson plans in real time or viewed in the Heart Zones Connect portal after class. Total percentage of MVPA, time in heart rate zone information and a graphical timeline are among the key data points that are included. Short-term adjustments may be made on the basis of the Class Average Summary report results. This data can also be accessed for a date range supporting long-term goals (i.e., 90% of the fifth graders will participate in MVPA for 50% of 32/40 class days). The key is to analyze the relevant data. The use of Heart Zones in YOUR program supports teacher and program effectiveness as well as student success.
The use of any of Heart Zones’ solution is not only of great value for motivating, engaging and encouraging students, but can be just as valuable for setting specific and measurable performance goals for teachers. Clear, concise and relevant goals that can be added to your performance measures to help guarantee your programs success. For more information on any of our Heart Zones solutions, visit www.heartzones.com.
[1] Smart PE is a movement in school physical education and health that uses technology and methodology together to assess students’ fitness and health while engaging and motivating their performance and success.
