How vigorous is my heart? - Center for Inspired Teaching

The following activity is part of a series we’re creating to support students, teachers, and caregivers, during this unprecedented time. Read more about the project here. If you try this activity with your student(s), we’d love to see what you do. Share your journey via the #Inspired2Learn hashtag on your preferred social platform.

Created by: Aleta Margolis
Discipline: writing, science, math/graphing, geography
Age level: any
Time: 30 min to all day

Materials: smartphone or other device to track time; Heart Rate Monitoring Sheet

Virtual learning shouldn’t mean sitting still in front of a screen. Remind your students (and yourself!) that our bodies don’t exist solely to carry our heads around.

What to do:

Ask students, “What kinds of vigorous exercise can you think of? This should be an activity that is really challenging physically, that you could do for a full 5 minutes, and that would make you work really hard.” Brainstorm, and record, the activities students suggest.

Share the following instructions/challenges with your students:

Take your resting heartbeat. If you have a smartphone or fitness tracker, you can use that. Otherwise use this as an opportunity to learn how to find and take your pulse, old-school style: Gently place your index and middle fingers over the inside of your wrist (on the side closer to your thumb); adjust the pressure until you can feel your pulse, well, pulsing. Or try your carotid artery on the side of your neck, just under your jaw on either side. Use a stopwatch or counter or the second hand on a clock to mark 60 seconds. Enter your resting heart rate for one minute on this sheet.

Want to instigate a little thought at this point? Ask your students why we take pulses using arteries instead of veins. Ask why we take pulses at all…why is a person’s pulse considered a useful measure of health? And furthermore, if we are measuring heart rate, why don’t we just put our hands over our hearts instead of our wrists or necks?

Do five minutes of vigorous exercise. Vigorous exercise includes jumping jacks, push-ups, running, jumping rope, burpees, cartwheels, sit-ups, rolling down a hill (and climbing back up and rolling down again).

Want to instigate a little more thought at this point? Ask your students what vigorous means. Encourage them to check out the Latin word vigere, and find out what it means. Challenge them to think of other words that might stem from that same root, in English and other languages. (Ask these questions before students begin exercising…or perhaps holler them out while they are exercising!)

Take your pulse immediately following the exercise. Enter it on this sheet.

Want to instigate more thought? Ask, “Once you stop exercising, do you think your heart rate immediately after exercise will be the same as it will be 50 seconds later? If not, what can you do to get a more accurate heart rate?”

Take your pulse again at the 1 minute mark. Enter it on the sheet.

If you want to instigate even more thought, ask students how they think they’ll manage to get an accurate heart rate immediately after exercising and then again at 60 seconds out. How will they plan their time in order to accomplish this? Hint: look at the question above!

Take your pulse again at the 5 minute mark. Enter it on the sheet.

Engage your students in observations of what happened.

Extensions:

If students can work in pairs, one student can serve as the observer and count their partner’s breath rate (number of breaths per minute) pre-exercise, immediately after exercise, one minute after exercise, and five minutes after. Then partners can switch roles and repeat the activity. In this case, simply add three ‘breath rate’ columns to the tracking sheet. Discussion questions can explore the relationship between heart rate and breath rate.

Consider challenging your students to engage in this activity every day. Set a time of day for this challenge. Go further by extending the period of vigorous exercise to 6 minutes on the second day, 7 minutes on the third day, etc. See what happens to heart/breath rates and recovery times.

Students can create graphs – simple to complex – based on the data they collect about heart rates and breath rates. Each student can graph their own information; or students can graph the information for the entire class (including the teacher – you should participate too!).

See our instructional model here.

Micaiah Anderson

Community Outreach Specialist

As a Community Outreach Specialist, Micaiah is responsible for program promotion and outreach support for Inspired Teaching events and workshops. Micaiah has a passion for collaborating with community members to build-power and connect. She is an educator with a heart for youth and has experience supporting students fight injustices within their schools and communities. She has a BA in Political Science from, the real HU, Hampton University & anticipates graduating in May 2024 with a Masters of Arts degree in Educational Policy Transformation from Georgetown University.

AUTONOMY

"I want to have a say in what happens to me."

Autonomy is the need for independence; the ability to make choices, to create, to explore, and to express oneself freely; to have sufficient space, to move around, and to feel unrestricted with opportunities to exercise free will.

Brady Maiden

Outreach Coordinator

As the Outreach Coordinator, Brady helps maintain Inspired Teaching’s social media presence and supports the organization’s mission to connect with DC community leaders, educators, and parents. Brady has her Master’s in Public Policy from George Mason University and her BS in Political Science from Northern Arizona University. She is passionate about community, equity, and coalition building recognizing that learning and growing with the community at large is how we continue to be impactful.

What brings you joy in life?

I find joy in spending time with my friends and family and meeting new people. I like going to concerts and festivals, and finding new books to read.

The Learner’s Cycle, Wonder-Experiment-Learn, and the Teacher’s Cycle, Observe-Plan-Instigate, comprise Inspired Teaching’s approach to engaging students in inquiry-based learning.

When they are engaged in the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, students are immersed in learning. They take the lead in designing authentic learning experiences around their own interests and their school’s standards of learning. Each discovery leads to a new question which in turn leads to more wondering and more learning. In the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, Learn is not a destination or an endpoint; it is a deeper understanding, leading to a deeper wondering and new possibilities that create new entry points to further exploration. The cycle continues because what students have learned generates more wonderings that require more experiments that foster more learning – and on and on.

The Observe-Plan-Instigate Cycle is the work of an Inspired Teacher. While a student is expected to follow the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, the teacher joins them on the learning journey while following their own cycle of Observe-Plan-Instigate. This cycle ultimately serves to ensure an inquiry-based atmosphere is at play in the classroom.

Jaqueta Abbey

Teaching and Learning Specialist

Jaqueta is the Teaching and Learning Specialist for Inspired Teaching. In addition to her current role with Inspired Teaching, Jaqueta is a first-grade teaching assistant. Her background features a variety of traditional and non-traditional experiences in the field of education, including working as an adjunct professor, teaching summer reading programs to children and adults, and tutoring children in the foster care system. Jaqueta earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in Interactive Media from Elon University.

What brings you joy in life?

Creative self-expression! In addition to my passion for storytelling, I love dancing of all kinds. I've studied belly dance, bachata, and Brazilian Zouk among other styles. I also enjoy glass fusing, crocheting, photography, and cross stitching. These art forms allow me to express myself and build connections with other people at the same time. I think life would be a lot less vibrant without artists and storytellers!

Michelle Welk

Communication & Marketing Specialist

As Communications and Marketing Specialist, Michelle is responsible for finding and creating new ways to highlight Inspired Teaching and promote its programs in order to expand and deepen the organization's impact. Michelle has worked in communications in an array of settings, from creative agencies to state politics to national nonprofits. She has a BA in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia and is passionate about education, access, and equity.

What brings you joy in life?

My son, the beach, making a persuasive argument and good food!

Max Peterson

Real World History Assistant Teacher

Max received his Bachelor’s degree in History and African American Studies from Boston University in May 2016. He has worked in museum curation at the Museum of the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Max has worked with young people of varying ages from young children to young adults transitioning to college.

Feedback and Accountability

We grow through feedback and an understanding that the quality of our work is a reflection of what we are learning, but the shift to remote learning this spring disrupted a lot of the tools teachers were used to using to evaluate student growth. How might we do things differently this fall? Participants in this workshop will explore ways to bring meaningful assessment into the virtual and/or socially-distanced classroom and approaches to student feedback that strengthen motivation, and build relationships and achievement.