Difficulty: Easy
With the growing epidemic of childhood obesity looming, teachers should take any opportunity theycanto get their students moving in class. Along with the obvioushealthbenefits, integrating periods of physical activity into your classes can increase student engagement and keep students on their toesand ready to learn. There are a number of things that teachers can do to easily incorporate physicalactivity into their class and help improve students' overall health and well being.

Jumping Jacks Waterfall
Get students out of their seats, and get their juices flowing with a jumping jack waterfall. Gather students into a circle, ensuring that each student has enough room to complete a jumping jack. Tellstudents that they are going to work together to accomplish an exciting task. Explain to students thatthey are going to create a jumping jack waterfall. To create this awesome effect, select a starting pointin the circle. The student at the starting point completes one jumping jack. As the student completes theumping jack, all students join in with counting "one." The student to right of the first student then doestwo jumping jacks, students again count the jumps. The jumping jacks continue in thisfashion, movingaround the circle with each person doing one additional jumping jack, until it gets back to the start of the circle. Congratulate students for their success when they accomplish the task.

Interactive Story
Instead of just listening to a story, students can join in the fun through the creation of an interactivestory. Select a story that has lots of movement, or invent your own. Before you start the story, explain tostudents that they are going to act out the movements in the story. Practice these actions withstudents, showing them how to run in place, pretend to swim and any other relevant action. Askstudents to stand, then start the story. As you read, pause when you announce an action, and allow thestudents to begin imitating the action described. Students will be more engaged, because they will haveto listen actively to determine what they are being ask to do. They will also be out of their seats, sothey will be less likely to doze off or lose focus.

Jumping Contest
Mix math and physical activity with this easy classroom competition. Divide students into groups of three or four. Provide each group with a yardstick and masking tape. Ask each group to lay out astraight strip of masking tape on the floor, and to mark that strip every half foot starting with six inchesand moving to six feet. Once students have laid down their measurements, instruct them to take turnsstanding at the start of the tape and jumping as far as they can. Remind students not to take a runningstart, but to jump forward from a standstill. Ask the groups to record their jump attempts. Once allstudents have tried their hand at jumping, ask each student to record the length of their longest jumpon the blackboard. Ask students to order the jump lengths from shortest to longest, and reward thestudent who achieved the longest jump distance.