Physical Education: Personal Fitness

The Physical Education: Personal Fitness course is designed for students to practice and develop skills in personal health-related fitness to help maintain physical health throughout their lives. Students will demonstrate and assess fitness levels by performing exercises or activities related to each fitness component, and establish personal goals for a healthier lifestyle.

In this course, students will explore 3 themes critical to understanding the role of fitness in life:

(1) Importance of setting up regular exercise routines and goals

(2) Healthy living and lifestyle choices

(3) Benefits of exercise for one’s physical, mental, and social health

By designing their fitness programs, students will improve cardiorespiratory endurance, flexibility, muscular strength, and muscular endurance. This course focuses on healthy living and lifestyle choices, emphasizing the role of physical activity. This course aligns with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for Comprehensive Health and Physical Education 2023 standards. Students can be exempt from certain activities based on religious preferences or health impairments as needed.

Students will engage with classmates through video note discussions sharing principles of exercise. Regular fitness logs will incorporate weekly activity and correlate it to the week's learning. By the end of the course, students will evaluate the benefits that regular exercise can provide for a person’s mental, physical, and social health with the ultimate goal of promoting healthy habits and exercise routines now and into the future.

As a standard-level course students are expected to invest approximately 6 hours per week on their course work.

Acknowledgements

Please Note: This course contains an end-of-course proctored exam. Instructions for students to identify an appropriate adult proctor are included in the course lessons.

Course Objectives

Course Essential Questions:

What are the benefits of participating in different types of physical activities?
How can physical activity contribute to a healthy lifestyle?
How can we develop a lifelong habit of being physically active?

Course Learning Objectives:

Apply a variety of physical activity skills in different movement patterns.
Analyze the benefits of regular participation in physical activities.
Create and assess fitness goals by applying the metrics of health-related fitness.
Identify the role of physical activity within the health triangle.

Additional Requirements

Students will need to upload videos of themselves performing exercises.
Students are expected to complete at least 30 minutes, four times per week, of consistent physical activity or exercise throughout the course.
Students will need a stopwatch and a basketball or similar ball.