BOKS Kids Fitness Certificate Developed in Cooperation with

Transcription

BOKS Kids Fitness Certificate
Developed in Cooperation with American Council on Exercise (ACE)
WHO: BOKS – Build Our Kids’ Success, an initiative of Reebok and the Reebok Foundation, is a
free before school physical activity program aimed to get elementary and middle school children
moving in the morning to prepare their bodies and day for a day of learning. The goal of the
program is to improve academic performance and overall health for children by promoting
physical activity and nutritional knowledge. The program is run by moms, dads, teachers and
volunteers, two to three days a week, before, during or after school. BOKS is a research based
initiative that is easy to implement, scalable and sustainable. The community members who
volunteer to become BOKS trainers serve as agents of change in their communities.
WHAT: The BOKS Kids Fitness Certificate provides individuals with a nationally recognized
credential to prove their knowledge and ability to successfully implement and run the school
based program. To receive the Certificate, individuals will complete an online quiz based on
information provided by BOKS. Once the exam is successfully completed, the BOKS Kids Fitness
Certificate will be immediately available to download and print. Additionally, all ACE Certified
professionals will receive .2 continuing education credits (CEC’s) for completing the exam and
implementing the program.
WHY: The need for children to engage in regular physical activity has become an
overwhelmingly urgent concern in the US. Recently the National Physical Activity Plan released
the 2014 United States Report Card on Physical Activity for Children & Youth. The results were
dismal and gave a grade of “D-“ to the overall physical activity level of children in school. The
report emphasized that the physical inactivity epidemic is due in part to an increase in sedentary
lifestyle habits. BOKS is an effective program in bringing a multi-dimensional solution to this
problem. You can help to positively impact the children in your community by acquiring your
Certificate and becoming a BOKS Kids Fitness Trainer!
HOW: A skilled BOKS Trainer is empowered to advise schools on the necessary steps to obtain
the FREE curriculum and assist with the implementation and completion of the 12-week
program. Once the Certificate is achieved and the BOKS Pledge is signed by an advocate
dedicated to helping implement the program, the trainer becomes part of the BOKS community
and receives access to an online platform designed to help them get the program up and
running immediately.
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CERTIFICATE REQUIREMENTS
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
The Trainer will: Educate, collaborate and engage with school administrators, teachers, parents
and children to promote the BOKS program before, during and/or after school as a tool to
increase physical activity and academic success.
1.1: Comprehend the Advocate Letter and possess ability to adapt appropriate language
to local school administrators and community.
1.2: Become knowledgeable and communicate the program’s direct response to an
unmet need before/during and after school time.
1.3: Communicate the BOKS goals to community stakeholders, school administrators
and parents.
1.4: Understand and follow the necessary steps to bring BOKS to a school.
1.5: Master the skills to utilize BOKS talking points and presentations to educate school
administration and parents about the program and discuss program implementation.
IMPACT, NEED AND RECOMMENDATION FOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY FOR CHILDREN
The Trainer will: Review and maintain knowledge of current recommendations for children’s
physical activity to accurately inform and increase awareness of stakeholders during the
community engagement process.
2.1: Learn what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for daily
physical activity for children.
2.2: Become familiar with the benefits of developing an active lifestyle at an early age
and its impact on physical, emotional and social development.
2.3: Gain awareness of the benefits of exercise on the brain and its ability to impact
academic performance.
2.4: Educate school administrators, teachers and parents on the scientific basis of the
need for children to receive the minimum recommended amount of daily physical
activity.
2.5 Be knowledgeable about the information in the book Spark by Dr. John Ratey of
Harvard Medical School and the correlation the research in the book draws between
physical activity and increased cognitive function.
PLANNING, ENROLLING AND IMPLEMENTATION
The Trainer will: Serve as the liaison between the school administration and parents to
efficiently convey program information and facilitate implementation.
3.1: Review the BOKS Roll-out-Procedures and appropriately apply
recommendations to a schools unique environment and modify where needed.
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the
3.2: Identify Program Details, Trainer Information, Trainer Expectations, Suggested
Policies and the How to Get Started Guide
3.3: Determine the structure of the program at the school (When, Where, How).
3.4: Enroll parents, school or community volunteers to help implement the program
based on an agreed upon plan with school administration.
3.5: Prepare and distribute program registration materials to identified school
population.
3.6: Manage collection of student BOKS registration materials, recording of pertinent
information on BOKS Trainer HUB and notification of program details to parents.
3.7: Learn how to access BOKS Trainer HUB and retrieve all necessary curriculum
materials and resources.
PROGRAM DETAILS AND BOKS CURRICULUM
The Trainer will: Learn and comprehend effective ways to organize the BOKS program and set it
up for success. Ability to understand, demonstrate and use the physical activity lesson plans,
games, skills, activities and BOKS Bits nutritional information based on the recommended 12week, 3x/week, 40 minute class structure.
4.1: Understand what makes a successful BOKS class.
4.2: Gain knowledge of appropriate settings in which schools can successfully
implement the program and ways to adapt the activities for various settings.
4.3: Develop awareness of the 7 components of a BOKS lesson plan and the amount of
time recommended for each to comprise a typical BOKS class.
4.4: Acquire knowledge of suggested policies and best practices for the BOKS program.
4.5: Identify and demonstrate the functional movement skills and their incorporation in
the BOKS 12-week curriculum.
4.6: Develop awareness of the nutritional component of the curriculum, the BOKS Bits
and understand the goal of incorporating this information with the physical activity
component.
4.7: Explain the process of a typical class to a school administrator, teacher, or parent
utilizing the sample curriculum.
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND EVALUATION
The Trainer will: Review and administer the program suggested practices that measures
effectiveness and utilize the Pre and Post surveys to gather student, parent and teacher
feedback.
5.1: Manage the program based on agreed upon plan with school administration.
5.2: Conduct ongoing management of the program throughout the “session” and lead
the BOKS classes utilizing the provided lesson plans and/or create own lesson plans.
5.3: Develop familiarity with BOKS Metrics (400 meter) protocol. Administering metrics
are not a required component of the BOKS curriculum; but can be included as a method
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to measure program effectiveness. Knowledge of how and where to record metrics on
the Trainer HUB if included in program plan.
5.4: Become familiar with the NIOST (National Institute on Out of School Time)
multiyear research study of the BOKS program and the association between beforeschool physical activity and executive function.
There are several resources provided to assist in the preparation for the BOKS Kids Fitness
Certificate exam.
Materials available for download
Reference #1 BOKS Advocate Letter
Reference #2 BOKS Executive Summary
Reference #3 BOKS Pledge
Reference #4 SPARK – Chapter 2 Learning
Reference #5 BOKS School Presentation
Reference #6 BOKS Roll Out Procedures
Reference #7 BOKS Curriculum
Reference #8 BOKS Lesson Plan Overview and Samples
Reference #9 BOKS Skill of the Week Introduction and Calendar
Reference #10 BOKS Trainer HUB Guide
Reference #11 BOKS Natick Multiyear Research Study - Highlights of Study Findings conducted
by the National Institute of Out of School Time (NIOST)
Website
Visit the BOKS Kids web site to enroll your school and take the BOKS Pledge. Once your school’s
principal has approved the program to be implemented at your school, you will receive a User
Name and Password to access the BOKS Trainer HUB and download the full BOKS Curriculum:
http://www.bokskids.org/
www.bokskids.org
BOKS Advocate Letter – BKFC Reference #1
Congratulations! We are happy you have discovered BOKS and want to get more
involved in the program. Brining BOKS to a school is a wonderful opportunity to be part
of that school’s community and make a difference in the lives of children.
There are many things to consider before you approach a school’s principal to get
permission to launch the program. In an effort to help outline the critical steps or pieces
to get your program off the ground, we created resources that walk you through the
details from start to finish. The following information is meant to thoroughly inform you of
the history of the program, how to communicate the benefits of BOKS to key school
personnel and community stakeholders, enroll a school and implement the program. You
will find a review of the curriculum, the Trainer Hub online management tool, read the
most recent research detailing the impact of the program and have access to a guide
designed as a time line leading up to the start of your program.
It is important for you to stay organized. You may want to consider purchasing a binder
or file to keep all of your program related materials and keep a notebook to track
questions, messages and ideas.
Being an advocate for BOKS can be incredibly rewarding. Our experience has shown
that you will get amazing feedback about BOKS from school administration, teachers,
parents, and of course the children. This feedback may be the catalyst for you to take a
bigger role in expanding the program in your area. We hope so!
Please refer back to our website for any questions (www.bokskids.org) and remember
BOKS ROCKS!
www.bokskids.org
BOKS Executive Summary – BKFC Reference #2
BOKS (Build Our Kids’ Success) is a before school physical activity program designed to
get elementary school aged children moving in the morning to have a more productive
school day. In 2009, Kathleen Tullie, a mom and now Founder and Executive Director of
BOKS, read the book, Spark, by Dr. John Ratey. The book clearly set forth the research
as to why kids should be active before school and she was inspired to create a program
at her children’s elementary school. With school approval and a group of passionate
moms, BOKS (formerly FKGU&G) was launched. With a robust curriculum, BOKS seeks
to empower the community to help the youth of this generation embrace healthy habits
that will last a lifetime by offering it for free.
BOKS is a direct response to the dwindling amount of physical activity programs in
elementary schools. BOKS’ mission is to promote the profound impact of physical
activity on a child’s mind, body and community. Its 12-week curriculum provides
elementary children with 45 minutes of fun, non-competitive, kid-friendly activities,
achieving moderate to vigorous physical activity through warm-ups, a skill of the week,
running, relay races, obstacle courses, group games and ending with an age appropriate
nutrition tip designed to increase nutritional knowledge and build healthy habits. BOKS
Bursts, an extension of the curriculum, offers 2-5 minute physical activity breaks for
teachers to use throughout the day.
BOKS will focus primarily on elementary schools (K-5). The program is aimed to
accommodate various sized schools with and without gyms, in suburban and urban
settings. BOKS develops community by enabling school faculty, parents and community
members to be involved in the program at different capacities. Providing a free
curriculum aids flexible implementation options for communities of different resources.
Most suburban schools run BOKS with parent volunteers.
To help ensure the continued success of the program, BOKS has engaged the National
Institute of Out of School Time (NIOST) to evaluate the overall program inputs and
outputs. Additionally, through a series of short and long term studies in suburban and
urban locations, NIOST is in a position to study the positive effects on physical activity
on academics, executive functioning and social determinants.
BOKS has received positive feedback and experienced exponential growth. From fall
2009 to spring 2013, BOKS grew from 1 elementary school in Natick, MA to over 1,000
elementary schools in four countries by the fall of 2014.
www.bokskids.org
BOKS Executive Summary cont. – BKFC Reference #2
As BOKS evolves, it intends to prove morning physical activity helps children focus
throughout the day resulting in higher test scores and lower disciplinary action and
hyperactivity in the classroom. BOKS will reach its goals to:



Start the morning with active play to jump start children’s brains and make them
better equipped for learning.
Increase opportunities for children to be physically active and gain nutritional
knowledge; creating healthy, life-long habits.
Empower communities to collaborate and make a positive difference in children's
lives
It’s time we make difference and create a healthier generation of children. Don’t sit still,
Active Kids = Active Minds. For more information on how to bring BOKS to your school
go to www.bokskids.org.
www.bokskids.org
The BOKS Pledge – BKFC Reference #3
1) Obtain administrative approval and support from your school principal, district
superintendent, or both. Having the right support is critical to the success of
BOKS in your school.
2) Read the BOKS training manual in full. Try to also participate in a training
session either at Reebok HQ and/or review the training videos via the website.
3) Always refer to the program as BOKS (Build Our Kids’ Success) and follow all
brand use guidelines provided by Reebok from time to time. By doing so, you
can properly integrate the branded tool associated with our program and benefit
from our publicity efforts. However, you will make clear that your school is
operating the program and is not an agent of Reebok.
4) Identify a strong lead trainer to head the program. Ensure all trainers are
qualified and receive the necessary training, including CPR, to lead BOKS at
your school (per the guidelines in the manual).
5) Make sure all trainers and volunteers have completed criminal background
checks prior to the start of the program, pursuant to school policy.
6) Follow the BOKS curriculum and lesson plans as identified in the BOKS training
manual (as updated from time-to-time); provided however, you agree that you
and those you engage to implement the program assume all risk of liability
associated with implementing the BOKS program.
7) Use your best efforts to collect and submit metrics (e.g., survey results, number
of activity minutes) to BOKS headquarters using the protocol and guidelines
outlined in the BOKS training manual.
8) Release and hold harmless Reebok International Ltd., Reebok International
Limited, the Reebok Foundation, Inc., BOKS and each of their parents, officers,
directors, agents, partners, sponsors and employees from all liability, claims,
demands, losses, or damages arising out of or related to your implementation of
the BOKS program, whether arising from the negligence of the participants or
otherwise, to the fullest extent permitted by law.
www.bokskids.org
The BOKS Pledge cont. – BKFC Reference #3
The BOKS name and logo, training manual, lesson plans, and all other materials
provided by Reebok are the property of Reebok. Subject to the terms of this Pledge,
Reebok grants to your school a limited license to use the BOKS name, logo, and
materials for operating a BOKS before-school physical activity program. Reebok may
revoke this permission if your program is not in compliance with its requirements.
By checking the box agreeing to the terms of the BOKS pledge, you agree that you will
not use the BOKS trademarks or materials for any commercial purpose, and you will not
share the materials outside of your school. You may use the BOKS name and logo on
promotional materials for your school’s program (e.g., a bulletin board or newsletter), but
you may NOT use the BOKS name or logo, or any other Reebok trademarks, on any
products (e.g., t-shirts, water bottles) or for any other reason without Reebok’s
permission. Please contact Reebok if you wish to order promotional products for your
school’s BOKS program.
www.bokskids.org
SPARK by Dr. John J. Ratey, MD with Eric Hagerman
Chapter 2 – “Learning” BKFC Reference #4
S PA R K
THE REVOLUTIONARY
NEW SCIENCE OF EXERCISE
AND THE BRAIN
J O H N J. RA T EY, M D
with E R I C H A G E R M A N
Little, Brown
and Company
New York
Boston
London
www.bokskids.org
Copyright © 2008 by John J. Ratey, MD
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of
1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First Edition: January 2008
The exercise program and other information contained in this book
should not be followed without first consulting your health care
professional.
The information contained in this book is based on sources that the
authors believe to be reliable. See www.johnratey.com for source
information.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ratey, John J.,
Spark : the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain / John J.
Ratey with Eric Hagerman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-316-11350-2
1. Exercise—Psychological aspects. 2. Exercise—Physiological aspects.
3. Mind and body. 4. Brain.
QP301.R38 2008
612.7'6—dc22
I. Hagerman, Eric.
II. Title.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
q-ff
Printed in the United States of America
www.bokskids.org
2007040162
2
Learning
GrowYourBrainCells
when the students in Titusville or in Naperville go for a mile run in gym,
they are more prepared to learn in their other classes: their senses are
heightened; their focus and mood are improved; they’re less fidgety and
tense; and they feel more motivated and invigorated. The same goes for
adults, in the classroom of life. What allows us to absorb the material is
where the revolutionary new science comes into play. In addition to
priming our state of mind, exercise influences learning directly, at the
cellular level, improving the brain’s potential to log in and process new
information.
Darwin taught us that learning is the survival mechanism we use
to adapt to constantly changing environments. Inside the
microenvironment of the brain, that means forging new connections
between cells to relay information. When we learn something,
whether it’s a French word or a salsa step, cells morph in order to
encode that information; the memory physically becomes part of the
brain. As a theory, this idea has been around for more than a century,
but only recently has it been borne out in the lab. What we now know
is that the brain is flexible, or plastic in the parlance of neuroscientists
— more Play-Doh than porcelain. It is an adaptable organ that can be
molded by input in much the same
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SPARK
way as a muscle can be sculpted by lifting barbells. The more you use
it, the stronger and more flexible it becomes.
The concept of plasticity is fundamental to understanding how the brain
works and how exercise optimizes brain function by fostering that quality.
Everything we do and think and feel is governed by how our brain cells,
or neurons, connect to one another. What most people think of as
psychological makeup is rooted in the biology of these connections.
Likewise, our thoughts and behavior and environment reflect back on
our neurons, influencing the pattern of connections. Far from being
hardwired, as scientists once envisioned it, the brain is constantly being
rewired. I’m here to teach you how to be your own electrician.
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSENGER
It’s all about communication. The brain is made up of one hundred
billion neurons of various types that chat with one another by way of
hundreds of different chemicals, to govern our every thought and
action. Each brain cell might receive input from a hundred thousand
others before firing off its own signal. The junction between cell
branches is the synapse, and this is where the rubber meets the road.
Synapses don’t actually touch, which is a little confusing because
neuroscientists talk about synapses “wiring together” when they
establish a connection. The way it works is that an electrical signal
shoots down the axon, the outgoing branch, until it reaches the synapse, where a neurotransmitter carries the message across the synaptic gap in chemical form. On the other side, at the dendrite, or the
receiving branch, the neurotransmitter plugs into a receptor — like a
key into a lock — and this opens ion channels in the cell membrane
to turn the signal back into electricity. If the electrical charge at the
receiving neuron builds up beyond a certain threshold, that nerve
cell fires a signal along its own axon, and the entire process repeats.
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Learning
About 80 percent of the signaling in the brain is carried out by two
neurotransmitters that balance each other’s effect: glutamate stirs up
activity to begin the signaling cascade, and gamma- aminobutyric acid
(GABA) clamps down on activity. When glutamate delivers a signal
between two neurons that haven’t spoken before, the activity primes
the pump. The more often the connection is activated, the stronger
the attraction becomes, which is what neuroscientists mean when they
talk about binding. As the saying goes, neurons that fire together wire
together. Which makes glutamate a crucial ingredient in learning.
Glutamate is a workhorse, but psychiatry focuses more on a group
of neurotransmitters that act as regulators — of the signaling process
and of everything else the brain does. These are serotonin,
norepinephrine, and dopamine. And although the neurons that
produce them account for only 1 percent of the brain’s hundred billion
cells, these neurotransmitters wield powerful influence. They might
instruct a neuron to make more glutamate, or they might make the
neuron more efficient or alter the sensitivity of its receptors. They can
override other signals coming into the synapse, thus lowering the
“noise” in the brain, or, conversely, amplify those signals. They can
deliver signals directly, like glutamate and GABA, but their primary
role is in adjusting the flow of information in order to fine-tune the
overall balance of neurochemicals.
Serotonin, which you’ll hear a lot more about in later chapters, is often
called the policeman of the brain because it helps keep brain
activity under control. It influences mood, impulsivity, anger, and
aggressiveness. We use serotonin drugs such as fluoxetine (Prozac), for
instance, because they help modify runaway brain activity that can
lead to depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsiveness.
Norepinephrine, which was the first neurotransmitter scientists studied
to understand mood, often amplifies signals that influence
attention, perception, motivation, and arousal.
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SPARK
Dopamine, which is thought of as the learning, reward
(satisfaction), attention, and movement neurotransmitter, takes on
sometimes contradictory roles in different parts of the brain.
Methylphenidate
(Ritalin)
eases
attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) by raising dopamine, thus calming the mind.
Most of the drugs we use to improve mental health target one or
more of these three neurotransmitters. But as I hope to make
abundantly clear, simply raising or lowering the level of a neurotransmitter doesn’t elicit a crisp one-to-one result because the system is so complex. Manipulating just one neurotransmitter creates a
ripple effect that takes different paths in different brains.
I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of
Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise
elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the
point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances
neurotransmitters — along with the rest of the neurochemicals in
the brain. And as you’ll see, keeping your brain in balance can
change your life.
TO LEARN IS TO GROW
As fundamental as the neurotransmitters are, there’s another class
of master molecules that over the past fifteen years or so has
dramatically changed our understanding of connections in the
brain, specifically, how they develop and grow. I’m talking about a
family of proteins loosely termed factors, the most prominent of
which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Whereas
neurotransmitters carry out signaling, neurotrophins such as BDNF
build and maintain the cell circuitry — the infrastructure itself.
During the 1990s, as neuroscientists began to pin down the
cellular mechanism of memory, BDNF became the focus of a whole
new field of research. About a dozen papers on BDNF were
published before 1990, the year scientists discovered that it exists
in
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Learning
the brain and nourishes neurons like fertilizer. Then, “a tsunami of
labs and pharma companies” joined the fray, says Eero Castrén, a
neuroscientist involved in the early work on BDNF at Sweden’s
Karolinska Institute. Today the research literature shows more than
fifty-four hundred papers on BDNF. Once it became clear that
BDNF was present in the hippocampus, an area of the brain related
to memory and learning, researchers set out to test whether it’s a
necessary ingredient in the process.
Learning requires strengthening the affinity between neurons through
a dynamic mechanism called long-term potentiation (LTP). When
the brain is called on to take in information, the demand naturally
causes activity between neurons. The more activity, the stronger the
attraction becomes, and the easier it is for the signal to fire and
make the connection. The initial activity marshals existing stores of
glutamate in the axon to be sent across the synapse and
reconfigures receptors on the receiving side to accept the signal.
The voltage on the receiving side of the synapse becomes stronger in
its resting state, thereby attracting the glutamate signal like a magnet.
If the firing continues, genes inside the neuron’s cell nucleus are
turned on to produce more building material for the synapses, and it is
this bolstering of the infrastructure that allows the new information to
stick as a memory.
Say you’re learning a French word. The first time you hear it,
nerve cells recruited for a new circuit fire a glutamate signal
between each other. If you never practice the word again, the
attraction between the synapses involved naturally diminishes,
weakening the signal. You forget. The discovery that astonished
memory researchers — and earned Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize — is that
repeated activation, or practice, causes the synapses themselves
to swell and make stronger connections. A neuron is like a tree
that instead of leaves has synapses along its dendritic branches;
eventually new branches sprout, providing more synapses to further
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solidify the connections. These changes are a form of cellular
adaptation called synaptic plasticity, which is where BDNF takes center
stage.
Early on, researchers found that if they sprinkled BDNF onto
neurons in a petri dish, the cells automatically sprouted new
branches, producing the same structural growth required for learning
— and causing me to think of BDNF as Miracle-Gro for the brain.
BDNF also binds to receptors at the synapse, unleashing the flow of
ions to increase the voltage and immediately improve the signal
strength. Inside the cell, BDNF activates genes that call for the
production of more BDNF as well as serotonin and proteins that build up
the synapses. BDNF directs traffic and engineers the roads as well.
Overall, it improves the function of neurons, encourages their growth,
and strengthens and protects them against the natural process of cell
death. And — as I hope to make clear throughout this book — BDNF
is a crucial biological link between thought, emotions, and movement.
THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION
Only a mobile creature needs a brain, points out New York University
neurophysiologist Rodolfo Llinás in his 2002 book, I of the Vortex: From
Neurons to Self. To illustrate, he uses the example of a tiny jellyfish-like
animal called a sea squirt: Born with a simple spinal cord and a three
hundred–neuron “brain,” the larva motors around in the shallows until it
finds a nice patch of coral on which to put down its roots. It has about
twelve hours to do so, or it will die. Once safely attached, however, the
sea squirt simply eats its brain. For most of its life, it looks much more
like a plant than an animal, and since it’s not moving, it has no use for its
brain. Llinás’s interpretation: “That which we call thinking is the
evolutionary internalization of movement.”
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Learning
As our species has evolved, our physical skills have developed into
abstract abilities to predict, sequence, estimate, plan, rehearse,
observe ourselves, judge, correct mistakes, shift tactics, and then
remember everything we did in order to survive. The brain circuits that
our ancient ancestors used to start a fire are the same ones we use
today to learn French.
Take the cerebellum, which coordinates motor movements and
allows us to do everything from returning a tennis serve to
resisting the pull of gravity. Starting with evidence that the trunk of
nerve cells connecting the cerebellum to the prefrontal cortex are
proportionally thicker in humans than in monkeys, it now appears
that this motor center also coordinates thoughts, attention,
emotions, and even social skills. I call it the rhythm and blues center.
When we exercise, particularly if the exercise requires complex motor
movement, we’re also exercising the areas of the brain involved in the
full suite of cognitive functions. We’re causing the brain to fire signals
along the same network of cells, which solidifies their connections.
When we learn something, a wide array of connected brain areas
are called into action. The hippocampus doesn’t do much without
oversight from the prefrontal cortex. Broadly speaking, the
prefrontal cortex organizes activity, both mental and physical,
receiving input and issuing instructions through the brain’s most
extensive network of connections. The prefrontal cortex is the boss.
As such, it is responsible for, among other things, keeping tabs on
our current situation through so-called working memory, inhibiting
stimuli and initiating action, judging, planning, predicting — all
executive functions. As the CEO of the brain, the prefrontal cortex
has to stay in close contact with the COO — the motor cortex — as
well as many other areas.
The hippocampus is something like the cartographer, receiving new
input from working memory, cross-referencing that information with
existing memories for the sake of comparison and to
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SPARK
form new associations, and reporting back to the boss. A memory,
scientists believe, is a collection of information fragments dispersed
throughout the brain. The hippocampus serves as a way station,
receiving the fragments from the cortex, and then bundling them
together and sending them back up as a map of a unique new pattern
of connections.
Brain scans show that when we learn a new word, for example, the
prefrontal cortex lights up with activity (as does the hippocampus and
other pertinent areas, such as the auditory cortex). Once the circuit
has been established by the firing of glutamate, and the word is learned,
the prefrontal cortex goes dark. It has overseen the initial stages of the
project, and now it can leave the responsibility to a team of capable
employees while it moves on to new challenges.
This is how we come to know things and how activities like riding a
bike become second nature. Patterns of thinking and movement
that are automatic get stored in the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and
brain stem — primitive areas that until recently scientists thought related
only to movement. Delegating fundamental knowledge and skills to
these subconscious areas frees up the rest of the brain to continue
adapting, a crucial arrangement. Imagine if we had to stop and think to
process every thought and to remember how to perform every action. We’d
collapse in a heap of exhaustion before we could pour our first cup of
morning coffee. Which is why a morning run is so important.
THE FIRST SPARK
In 1995 I was in the process of researching my book A User’s Guide to the
Brain, when I came across a one-page article in the journal Nature
about exercise and BDNF in mice. There was scarcely more than a
column of text, yet it said everything. Namely, that exercise elevates
Miracle-Gro throughout the brain.
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“I expected the big changes to occur in motor-sensory areas of the brain
— the motor cortex, the cerebellum, the sensory cortex, maybe even the
basal ganglia a little bit — because they’re all involved with movement,”
recalls Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and
Dementia at the University of California, Irvine, who designed the
study. “We developed the first films and, son of a gun, it showed up in
the hippocampus. Well, the significance is that the hippocampus is an
area of the brain that is extremely vulnerable to degenerative disease
and that is needed for learning. Instantly I said, This changes the game
completely.”
The news certainly came out of left field for me. For years, I had been a
vocal proponent of using exercise for ADHD and many other
psychological issues, based on what I’d seen with my own patients
and what I knew about exercise’s effect on neurotransmitters. But this was
different. By showing that exercise sparks the master molecule of the
learning process, Cotman nailed down a direct biological connection
between movement and cognitive function. In doing so, he blazed the
trail for the study of exercise in neuroscience.
Cotman conducted this experiment not long after BDNF was
discovered in the brain, and there was nothing to suggest that exercise
had anything to do with it; his hypothesis was an act of sheer
creativity. He’d just finished working on a long-term aging study
designed to see if the people whose minds hold up best share anything in common. Among those with the least cognitive decline over
a four-year period, three factors turned up: education, self- efficacy,
and exercise. The first two weren’t so surprising, but Cot- man was
curious about the last. “I got to thinking about what the heck was
really going on,” he says. “The assumption was that exercise didn’t act
on the brain, but my take on it was that somehow it had to be the
brain.”
At the time, if you’d asked what variable might underlie overall brain
health, most scientists would have said neurotrophic factors
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because they were “kind of the in thing,” says Cotman, and everyone
knew that BDNF helped neurons in culture survive. It was a bit of a leap,
but if Cotman could tie exercise to BDNF, he’d at least have a plausible
explanation for why it turned up in the aging study.
He set up an experiment to measure the levels of BDNF in the
brains of mice that exercise. It was important that the exercise be
voluntary because if he forced the mice to run on treadmills, he feared
his peers might say the effect was from the stress of being handled.
No problem: he’d use running wheels. As an indication of how new
this territory was, finding rodent equipment that the university would
approve for lab use was an ordeal in itself — Cotman had to pay
$1,000 apiece for stainless steel running wheels that would pass
protocol. “I remember signing the purchase order and thinking, This is
painful; I just hope it doesn’t not work,” he jokes. On top of that, none
of his postdoctoral students wanted anything to do with this research,
and he had to go through a number of graduate students before
finding a physical therapy major who liked the idea.
Unlike humans, rodents seem to inherently enjoy physical activity, and
Cotman’s mice ran several kilometers a night. They were divided into
four groups: mice running for two, four, or seven nights, and one control
group with no running wheel. When their brains were injected with a
molecule that binds to BDNF and scanned, not only did the scans
of the running rodents show an increase in BDNF over controls, but
the farther each mouse ran, the higher the levels were. When
Cotman saw the results — that the spike occurred in the
hippocampus — he didn’t believe them himself: “I said, No, c’mon guys,
we did something wrong; the darn hippocampus is lit up. We had to
repeat the experiment — it was too far out. And so we did, and we got
the same results.”
As the stories of BDNF and exercise developed in parallel, it became
clear that BDNF was important not merely for the survival of neurons but
also for their growth (sprouting new branches) and
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thus for learning. Eero Castrén, as well as Susan Patterson from
Kandel’s lab at Columbia, found that if you stimulate LTP in mice by
making them learn, BDNF levels increase. Looking inside their brains,
researchers determined that mice without BDNF lose their capacity for
LTP; conversely, injecting BDNF directly into the brains of rats
encouraged LTP. Then one of Cotman’s former postdoctoral students,
neurosurgeon Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, showed that if you neutralize
BDNF in mice, they are slow to find their way out of a pool having a
hidden platform. It all adds up to solid evidence of how exercise helps
the brain learn.
“One of the prominent features of exercise, which is sometimes not
appreciated in studies, is an improvement in the rate of learning, and I
think that’s a really cool take-home message,” Cotman says. “Because
it suggests that if you’re in good shape, you may be able to learn and
function more efficiently.”
Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that
people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise
than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated
directly with levels of BDNF. Along with that, people with a gene
variation that robs them of BDNF are more likely to have learning
deficiencies. Without Miracle-Gro, the brain closes itself off to the world.
Psychiatry had grudgingly accepted the idea that exercise could help
improve our state of mind by creating a conducive environment for
learning. But Cotman’s work laid the foundation for proving that exercise
strengthens the cellular machinery of learning. BDNF gives the
synapses the tools they need to take in information, process it,
associate it, remember it, and put it in context. Which isn’t to say that
going for a run will turn you into a genius. “You can’t just inject BDNF
and be smarter,” Cotman points out. “With learning, you have to
respond to something in a different way. But the something has to be
there.”
And without question, what that something is matters.
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THE NATURE OF NURTURE
Scientists all the way back to Ramón y Cajal — who won the Nobel Prize
in 1906 for proposing that the central nervous system was made up of
individual neurons that communicate at what he termed polarized
junctions — have theorized that learning involves changes at the
synapses. Despite the accolades, most scientists didn’t buy it. And it
wasn’t until 1945 that a psychologist from McGill University named
Donald Hebb stumbled onto the first hint of evidence. The lab rules
were loose in those days, and apparently Hebb thought it would be fine if
he brought some lab rats home as temporary pets for his children.
The arrangement turned out to be mutually beneficial: When he
returned the rats to the lab, Hebb noticed that compared to their
cage-bound peers, they excelled in learning tests. The novel
experience of being handled and toyed with somehow improved their
learning ability, which Hebb interpreted to mean that it changed their
brains. In his acclaimed text- book, The Organization of Behavior: A
Neuropsychological Theory, he described the phenomenon as “usedependent plasticity.” The theory was that the synapses rearrange
themselves under the stimulation of learning.
Hebb’s work ties in with exercise because physical activity counts as
novel experience, at least as far as the brain is concerned. In the 1960s
a group of psychologists at Berkeley formalized an experimental
model called environmental enrichment as a way to test usedependent plasticity. Rather than take rodents home, the researchers
outfitted their cages with toys, obstacles, hidden food, and running
wheels. They also grouped the animals together, so they could
socialize and play.
It wasn’t all peace and love, though, and eventually the rodents’ brains
were dissected. Living in an environment with more sensory and social
stimuli, the lab tests showed, altered the structure and function of the
brain. Not only did the rats fare better on learn-
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ing tasks, but their brains weighed more compared to those housed alone in
bare cages. Hebb’s definition of plasticity hadn’t included growth. “This was at
a time when it was almost heresy to say that the brain could actually
change,” says neuroscientist William Greenough — who, as a young graduate
student during that period, was keenly interested in the Berkeley work —
“especially in a physical way, through experience.”
Greenough wanted to investigate environmental enrichment, but was
warned off from that line of inquiry. “My adviser essentially said, If you pick
that as your thesis, you’ll be in Vietnam for sure,” Greenough recalls. But as
the Berkeley findings were replicated, the notion that experience could
impact the brain gained a foothold. In a parallel line of research, a group from
Harvard proved the converse — that environmental deprivation could
shrink the brain. In examining cats raised with one eye sewn shut, they found
that the visual cortex was significantly smaller. All this work established the
metaphor of the brain as a muscle, and the notion of use it or lose it.
Aside from challenging the long-standing separation between biology and
psychology, the social implications of environmental enrichment were
radical. The Berkeley studies led to the creation of Head Start, the federal
education program that provides funding to send disadvantaged children to
preschool. Why should poor kids be left in bare cages? The field took off, and
neuroscientists began to investigate different ways to stimulate brain growth.
Once Greenough was safely ensconced as a faculty member, at the
University of Illinois, he turned back to this line of research. In a seminal study
in the early 1970s, he used an electron microscope to show that
environmental enrichment made the neurons sprout new dendrites. The
branching caused by the environmental stimulation of learning, exercise, and
social contact caused the synapses to form more connections, and those
connections had thicker myelin sheaths, which allowed them to fire signals
more efficiently.
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Now we know that such growth requires BDNF. This remodeling of the
synapses has a huge impact on the circuits’ capacity to process
information, which is profoundly good news. What it means is that you
have the power to change your brain. All you have to do is lace up your
running shoes.
STRETCHING PLASTICITY
As the concept of synaptic plasticity took hold in neuroscience, an even
more radical notion of growth was gaining credence. For the better part
of the twentieth century, scientific dogma held that the brain was
hardwired once fully developed in adolescence, meaning we’re born with
all the neurons we’re going to get. We can rearrange synapses all we like,
but we can only lose neurons. Certainly, we can speed up the decline, a
point that your eighth-grade biology teacher may have made to scare
you away from underage drinking. “Now, remember: alcohol kills brain
cells, and they never grow back.”
But guess what? They do grow back — by the thousands. Not until
scientists became handy with advanced imaging tools that enabled
them to peer into the brain did they find conclusive evidence, which
was published in a seminal 1998 paper. It came from an unlikely
source. Cancer patients are sometimes injected with a dye that shows
up in proliferating cells so that the spread of the disease can be
tracked. Researchers looked at the brains of terminally ill patients who
had donated their bodies to science and found that their
hippocampi were packed with the dye marker, proof that neurons
were dividing and propagating — a process called neurogenesis —
just like cells in the rest of the body. With that, they formalized one of
the biggest discoveries in neuroscience.
Ever since, from Stockholm to Southern California to Prince- ton, New
Jersey, neuroscientists have been scrambling to figure out what our new
brain cells actually do. The implications are wide- ranging, given that
the fundamental cause of degenerative diseases
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such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s is dying and damaged cells.
Aging itself is a matter of cells dying, and suddenly we learned that the
brain has a built-in countermeasure, at least in certain areas.
Figure out how to kick-start neurogenesis, and maybe we could
make replacement parts for the brain.
And what does this mean for healthy brains? One of the early clues
about neurogenesis had come from studies of chickadees, which
learn new songs every spring and also show a significant burst of
new cells in the hippocampus. Coincidence? The fledgling cells hinted
at some role in learning, but proof has been hard to come by. Like
synaptic plasticity, “neurogenesis is clearly involved in our interactions
with our environment, both emotionally and cognitively,” says
neuroscientist Fred Gage, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.
Gage was one of the researchers, along with Peter Eriksson of
Sweden, who conducted the linchpin study in 1998. “Trying to figure
out what exactly [neurogenesis] is doing is a real interesting problem.”
Neurons are born as blank-slate stem cells, and they go through a
development process in which they need to find something to do in
order to survive. Most of them don’t. It takes about twenty-eight days
for a fledgling cell to plug into a network, and, as with existing
neurons, Hebb’s concept of activity-dependent learning would apply: if
we don’t use the newborn neurons, we lose them. Gage went back
to the environmental enrichment model to test this idea in rodents.
“When we first did our experiments, we had all sorts of things going
on,” Gage explains. “We needed to tease that out, and to our
surprise, just putting a running wheel in a cage had a profound
effect on the number of cells that were born. Ironically, with running,
the same percentage of cells die as in the control group — it’s just
that you have a bigger starting pool. But in order for a cell to survive
and integrate, it has to fire its axon.” Exercise spawns neurons, and
the stimulation of environmental enrichment helps those cells survive.
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The first solid link between neurogenesis and learning came from one
of Gage’s colleagues, Henrietta van Praag. They used a rodent-size
pool filled with opaque water to hide a platform just beneath the
surface in one quadrant. Mice don’t like water, so the experiment was
designed to test how well they remember, from an earlier dip, the
location of the platform — their escape route. When comparing inactive
mice with others that hit the running wheel four to five kilometers a
night, the results showed that the runners remembered where to find
safety more quickly. Both groups swam at the same rate, but the
exercised animals made a beeline for the platform, while the sedentary
ones floundered about before figuring it out. When the mice were
dissected, the active mice had twice as many new stem cells in the
hippocampus as the inactive ones. Speaking generally about what
they found, Gage says: “There is a significant correlation between the
total number of cells and [a mouse’s] ability to perform a complex task.
And if you block neurogenesis, mice can’t recall information.”
Although all this research is in rodents, you can see how it might
relate back to the kids in Naperville: Gym class provides the brain
with the right tools to learn, and the stimulation in the kids’ classes
encourages those newly developing cells to plug into the network,
where they become valuable members of the signaling community.
The neurons are given a mission. And it seems that cells spawned
during exercise are better equipped to spark LTP. They are plastic
phenoms, which led Princeton neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould to
suggest that perhaps our new neurons play a role in hanging onto our
conscious thoughts, while the prefrontal cortex decides if they should
be wired in as long-term memories. Gould is the researcher who first
showed that primates grow new neurons, paving the way for
experiments on human neurogenesis.
She and everyone else in the field of neuroscience are still
unpacking the relationship between neurogenesis and learning, and
exercise has been a crucial lab tool. What I find interest-
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ing, though, is that relatively few scientists are studying exercise
because they’re interested in exercise. Rather, they make the mice run
because it “massively increases neurogenesis,” as the title of a 2006
study in Hippocampus proclaimed, and thus allows researchers to
deconstruct the chain of signals behind the process. That’s what the
pharmaceutical companies need to create drugs. They dream of an antiAlzheimer’s pill that regenerates neurons to keep memory intact. “There
has to be some kind of chemical stuff in the [hippocampus] that is
sensing exercise and saying, OK, let’s start cranking out new cells,” says
Columbia University neurologist Scott Small, who recently used a novel
MRI technique to track neurogenesis in live human subjects. “If we can
identify those molecular pathways, we might be able to think of clever
ways to induce neurogenesis biochemically.”
Just imagine if they could put exercise in a bottle.
THE BODY-MIND CONNECTION
If we’re going to have new cells, we’ll need fertilizer for them, and from
the get-go, neurogenesis researchers have been onto BDNF. They
already knew that without Miracle Gro our brains can’t take in new
information, and now they’ve seen that BDNF is also a necessary
ingredient for making new cells.
BDNF gathers in reserve pools near the synapses and is unleashed
when we get our blood pumping. In the process, a number of hormones
from the body are called into action to help, which brings us to a new list
of initialisms: IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), VEGF (vascular endothelial
growth factor), and FGF-2 (fibro- blast growth factor). During exercise,
these factors push through the blood-brain barrier, a web of
capillaries with tightly packed cells that screen out bulky intruders
such as bacteria. Scientists have just recently learned that once inside
the brain, these factors work with BDNF to crank up the molecular
machinery of learning.
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They are also produced within the brain and promote stem-cell
division, especially during exercise. The broader importance is that these
factors trace a direct link from the body to the brain.
Take IGF-1, a hormone released by the muscles when they sense the
need for more fuel during activity. Glucose is the major energy source for
the muscles and the sole energy source for the brain, and IGF-1 works
with insulin to deliver it to your cells. What’s interesting is that the role of
IGF-1 in the brain isn’t related to fuel management, but to learning —
presumably so we can remember where to locate food in the
environment. During exercise, BDNF helps the brain increase the
uptake of IGF-1, and it activates neurons to produce the signaling
neurotransmitters, serotonin and glutamate. It then spurs the
production of more BDNF receptors, beefing up connections to solidify
memories. In particular, BDNF seems to be important for long-term
memories.
Which makes perfect sense in light of evolution. If we strip
everything else away, the reason we need an ability to learn is to help
us find and obtain and store food. We need fuel to learn, and we need
learning to find a source of fuel — and all these messengers from the
body keep this process going and keep us adapting and surviving.
To pipe fuel to new cells, we need new blood vessels. When our
body’s cells run short of oxygen, as they can when our muscles contract
during exercise, VEGF gets to work building more capillaries in the
body and the brain. Researchers suspect that one way VEGF is vital to
neurogenesis is its role in changing the permeability of the blood-brain
barrier, prying back the fence to let other factors through during exercise.
Another important element from the body that makes its way to the
brain is FGF-2, which, like IGF-1 and VEGF, is increased during exercise and
is necessary for neurogenesis. In the body, FGF-2 helps tissue grow, and in
the brain it’s important to the process of LTP.
As we age, production of all three of these factors and BDNF
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naturally tails off, bringing down neurogenesis with it. Even before we
get old, however, a drop in these factors and in neurogenesis can show
up in stress and depression, as we’ll see later. To me, this is actually
encouraging news, because if moving the body increases BDNF,
IGF-1, VEGF, and FGF-2, it means we have some control over the
situation.
It’s about growth versus decay, activity versus inactivity. The body
was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push
our brains too. Learning and memory evolved in concert with the motor
functions that allowed our ancestors to track down food, so as far as
our brains are concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to
learn anything.
EXERCISE YOUR OPTIONS
Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it
optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation;
second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another,
which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it
spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the
hippocampus. OK, but now you want to know what the best exercise
plan is. I wish there were an ideal type and amount of activity to
suggest for building your brain, but scientists are only beginning to
tackle such questions. “Nobody’s done that research yet,” says William
Greenough. “But I suspect in five years we’ll know a lot more.”
Still, we can draw certain conclusions from the existing research.
One thing scientists know for sure is that you can’t learn difficult material
while you’re exercising at high intensity because blood is shunted away
from the prefrontal cortex, and this hampers your executive function.
For example, while working out on the treadmill or the stationary
bike for twenty minutes at a high intensity of 70 to 80 percent of their
maximum heart rate, college students
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perform poorly on tests of complex learning. (So don’t study for the Law
School Admission Test with the elliptical machine on full-tilt.) However,
blood flow shifts back almost immediately after you finish exercising, and
this is the perfect time to focus on a project that demands sharp thinking
and complex analysis.
A notable experiment in 2007 showed that cognitive flexibility improves
after just one thirty-five-minute treadmill session at either 60 percent or
70 percent of maximum heart rate. The forty adults in the study (age
fifty to sixty-four) were asked to rattle off alternative uses for common
objects, like a newspaper — it’s meant for reading, but it can be used to
wrap fish, line a birdcage, pack dishes, and so forth. Half of them
watched a movie and the other half exercised, and they were tested
before the session, immediately after, and again twenty minutes later.
The movie watchers showed no change, but the runners improved
their processing speed and cognitive flexibility after just one workout.
Cognitive flexibility is an important executive function that reflects our
ability to shift thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts
and answers as opposed to a regurgitation of the usual responses. The
trait correlates with high-performance levels in intellectually demanding
jobs. So if you have an important afternoon brainstorming session
scheduled, going for a short, intense run during lunchtime is a smart
idea.
A lot of the research I’ve mentioned in this chapter revolves around
exercise’s effect on the hippocampus, because its role in forming
memories makes it vital to learning. But the hippocampus isn’t off by
itself somewhere, stamping out new circuits on its own accord. The
learning process calls on a lot of areas, under the direction of the
prefrontal cortex. The brain has to be aware of the incoming stimulus,
hold it in working memory, give it emotional weight, associate it with
past experience, and relate all this back to the hippocampus. The
prefrontal cortex analyzes the information, sequences it, and ties
everything together. It works with the
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cerebellum and the basal ganglia, which keep these functions on
track by maintaining rhythm for the back-and-forth of information.
Improving plasticity in the hippocampus strengthens a crucial link in
the chain, but learning creates bushier, healthier, better connected
neurons throughout the brain. The more we build these networks and
enrich our stores of memory and experience, the easier it is to learn,
because what we already know serves as a foundation for forming
increasingly complex thoughts.
As for how much aerobic exercise you need to stay sharp, one small
but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty
minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved
executive function. But it’s important to mix in some form of activity
that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
Greenough worked on an experiment several years ago in which
running rats were compared to others that were taught complex motor
skills, such as walking across balance beams, unstable objects, and
elastic rope ladders. After two weeks of training, the acrobatic rats had a
35 percent increase of BDNF in the cerebellum, whereas the running
rats had none in that area. This extends what we know from the
neurogenesis research: that aerobic exercise and complex activity have
different beneficial effects on the brain. The good news is they’re
complementary. “It’s important to take both into account,” says
Greenough. “The evidence isn’t perfect, but really, your regimen has to
include skill acquisition and aerobic exercise.”
What I would suggest, then, is to either choose a sport that simultaneously
taxes the cardiovascular system and the brain — tennis is a good
example — or do a ten-minute aerobic warm-up before something
nonaerobic and skill-based, such as rock climbing or balance drills. While
aerobic exercise elevates neurotransmitters, creates new blood vessels
that pipe in growth factors, and spawns new cells, complex activities put
all that material to use by strengthening and expanding networks. The
more complex the movements,
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the more complex the synaptic connections. And even though these circuits
are created through movement, they can be recruited by other areas and used
for thinking. This is why learning how to play the piano makes it easier for kids
to learn math. The prefrontal cortex will co-opt the mental power of the physical
skills and apply it to other situations.
Learning the asanas of yoga, the positions of ballet, the skills of gymnastics,
the elements of figure skating, the contortions of Pilates, the forms of karate —
all these practices engage nerve cells throughout the brain. Studies of dancers,
for example, show that moving to an irregular rhythm versus a regular one
improves brain plasticity. Because the skills involved in these activities are
unnatural forms of movement, they serve as activity-dependent learning of the
sort that made Hebb’s rats smarter and that Greenough showed made
synapses bushier.
Any motor skill more complicated than walking has to be learned, and thus
it challenges the brain. At first you’re awkward and flail a little bit, but then as
the circuits linking the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex get
humming, your movements become more precise. With the repetition, you’re
also creating thicker myelin around the nerve fibers, which improves the quality
and the speed of the signals and, in turn, the circuit’s efficiency. To take the
example of karate, as you perfect certain forms, you can incorporate them into
more complicated movements, and before long you have new responses to
new situations. The same would hold true for learning tango. The fact that
you have to react to another person puts further demands on your attention,
judgment, and precision of movement, exponentially increasing the complexity
of the situation. Add in the fun and social aspect, and you’re activating the
brain and the muscles all the way down through the system. And then you’re
primed and ready to move on to the next challenge, which is what it’s all about.
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BOKS Roll Out Procedures – BKFC Reference #6
Checklist
This checklist was created in order to help with your planning process. It assumes best practices
involved in setting up a BOKS program. This checklist will be most helpful after familiarizing yourself
with all the BOKS materials found on our website. Note: the timeframes are suggestions, but may not
align with your schedule.
Two to Three Months prior to Anticipated Start Date:
Raising Awareness:
 Meet with Superintendent, District Wellness Coordinator or Champion, Principals and/or
PE teacher to present the program, answer questions, explain metrics etc. and give a
program confirmation date deadline to determine if the school is going to run BOKS. Materials
to make an impactful presentation can be found on the BOKS website: www.bokskids.org.
 Make sure a lead trainer and/or town coordinator has been determined before agreeing to
start the program. (ask principal/superintendent for suggestions)
 Upon district approval, determine start date for program and put together time line of key
dates for the steps below.
Once Program is approved, determine structure:
 Review insurance coverage with district.
 Review funding options:
o Consider reaching out to local media and businesses, search for community events
to spread the word and possibly raise some funds.
o Determine if any physical activity or nutrition grants are available in the school district.
o Talk to the PTO/PTA to see if there are excess funds available to help defer some of
the initial startup costs.
o Consider reaching out to local media and businesses, search for community events
to spread the word and possibly raise some funds.
o Determine how best to implement BOKS at your school or district:
 Determine the student capacity for the program at your school or each school in district
based on the size of the schools and the space/facilities within the schools.
 Will there be a cost to participants or the school for the program?
 Consider setting up a separate e-mail account for BOKS related correspondence before
Superintendent/Principal sends out the community message.
 Superintendent and /or Principal to send communication to school community announcing
program and how to sign up/volunteer/get involved. (provided on our website).
Six Weeks to Two Months prior to Anticipated Start:
Outreach:
 Determine if there is an opportunity to have a presence at a community/school night or
PTO/PTA meeting. Confirm/refine/update program materials to distribute at school meeting
above.
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Follow up with lead trainer(s) to determine school trainers. Trainers may be teachers or
other school staff and parents. All parties involved with BOKS need to have background
checks completed.
Determine if there is a need to have an informational meeting for all interested trainers to
explain program and answer questions.
Finalize Trainers and appropriate documentation:
 
Consider coordinating CPR training for all trainers. For the safety of the participants, it is best
practice to have at least one trainer (if not all) certified especially if the nurse is not present
during class time.
 Consider if payroll paperwork/materials for the trainers will be needed and distribute
accordingly. (for paid trainer model)
 Announce school trainers for district. All others can be volunteers and must have background
checks completed as well.
Logistics:
 Have a site visit if needed to meet with the Principal, nurse, PE teacher if applicable and
lead trainer.
o Discuss items including registration procedures, bulletin boards etc.
o Measure the 400 meter course; determine options for indoor and outdoor space
(including playground) to run the program when indoors. See how many gym laps = 400
meters.
o 
Determine secure location for equipment package.
o Confirm morning drop off location and routine
o 
Locate the closest restrooms and water fountains.
o Review procedures, steps to implement an emergency action plan.
o Speak with nurse to confirm location of epi-pens, inhalers if possible. Give an overview
of the program and discuss the nature of injuries that could occur and discuss the
protocol or procedures that may already be in place.
o Get a copy of “School Rules”, if applicable or consult the School Handbook.
 
Consider executing a School/District Memorandum of Understanding for the program as
applicable. This document explains in detail the responsibilities and expectations for all parties
involved in the program.
 
Determine how all family correspondence will be transmitted (via backpack or email) and if
any materials need to be translated. You will need to allow lead time for this going
forward if necessary.
 Review Special Education policy in district and discuss the policy with the Principal as needed.
 Determine if there is a school related form needed to use the school facility for BOKS, such as
a building usage form to reserve the space inside the school. If yes, then fill it out accordingly.
Four to Six Weeks prior to Anticipated Start:
 Provide copies of Training Manual to all trainers prior to training.
 Order equipment based on maximum capacity of participants per school if needed. (See
BOKS suggested equipment list.)
 Create a trainer contact spreadsheet for each school for trainers.
 Distribute registration materials to school community, including a parent volunteer memo, if
needed.
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
Ask trainers and volunteers to submit background check forms with school, if not previously
done so and documented.
Two to Four Weeks prior to Anticipated Start:
 Complete “Emergency Action Plan” (EAP).
 Hold or attend training session for trainers.
 Have trainers get CPR certified, if needed as discussed above.
 If needed, hold a follow up meeting with lead trainers to finalize logistics, planning, further
review of lesson plans, provide strategies for trainers etc.
One to Two Weeks prior to Anticipated Start:
 Confirm equipment delivery or pick up.
 Hold meeting with school trainers and/or volunteers as needed to review and reiterate
program specifics including the EAP.
 Collect registration materials, select participants (lottery or first come first served). Send out
participant announcement and welcome letter which includes start time, program days,
contact information, drop off protocol, what to bring, volunteer info, etc. (1 week before start
date).
 Obtain list of teachers and email addresses if possible, for survey contact information.
Zero to One Week prior to Anticipated Start:
 Set up school information on BOKS Trainer HUB and participant database from completed
registration forms.
 Review the “First Day Talking Points/First Day Plan of Action”, included in Training Folders Program Preparation on BOKS Trainer HUB
 Make sure the lead trainer has all participant documentation including Participant Info
Sheet, Weekly Attendance Sheet, Emergency and Allergy Contact Information and the EAP.
Launch Date:
 Make sure that there are plenty of parents and volunteers.
 Get to school EARLY.
 Smile and have fun. Remember, it takes about 3 weeks to really get things running smoothly!
 Hold post-launch meeting with Trainers to review first day.
Week 1:
 Make sure the lead trainer(s) has all updated participant documentation in the Participant
Information section of the BOKS Trainer HUB, including:
o Emergency contact info and allergy info
 Administer Nutrition Survey, if applicable, to gain a base-line knowledge level. (Grades 3
and above)
 Determine when to stop accepting children into the program, if needed.
Week 2:
 Continue to practice running and reinforcing the rules of your BOKS class and having fun!
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Week 3:
 Perform 400 meter run metric, in accordance with metrics protocol, if applicable.
 Input results into Trainer HUB.
 Continue to follow the suggested lesson plans and BOKS bits for class. Once you feel more
comfortable, you may add some touches of your own. Feel free to share any successful tactics
with us via our website.
 Refer back to the bokskids.org website frequently. We will post updates, include special
holiday curriculum and showcase schools that are making a difference.
 Our website may include contests and other opportunities to take advantage of
program incentives.
Final 2 Weeks of Program:
 Perform 400 meter running metric to see the improvement during the course of the session.
 Administer Teacher surveys, if applicable. Make sure to enlist principal support and
endorsement to be successful and consider offering incentives.
 Administer Parent survey, if applicable. Stress the importance of the feedback for the program.
 Administer Participant survey, if applicable, during last few days of session.
 Administer Nutrition Survey again, if applicable, to see what has been learned during the
session. (Grades 3 and above)
Post Program and/or in between sessions:
 Hold a meeting with the trainers to review successful components of the program and
identify weaknesses that could be improved. Make a strategy to implement the changes
needed.
 Collect and summarize survey results to share with parents and school or district administration.
 Tabulate the results of the metrics to gauge the level of physical improvement.
 Summarize your attendance data and calculate the number of physical activity minutes for
your program (# of participants x #of classes x # of minutes in each class). Report this
information back to our website. We want to know your results!
 Assess your equipment and supply needs for the next session.
 Make a time line for the next session and start back up at 4 to 6 weeks before Anticipated start
 Consider potential funding options now that you have completed a pilot session of BOKS.
 Tell your friends and family about BOKS. Consider an opportunity to spread the word through
local press. Share your success and give yourself a HIGH FIVE!
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BOKS Curriculum – BKFC Reference #7
Table of Contents
Introduction
Philosophy of Training
Program Details
Training Information
Trainer Expectations
Suggested Policies
Lesson Plans
BOKS Bits
How to Get Started – First Day Plan of Action
Conclusion
3
4
6
10
11
12
16
17
18
21
You and those you engage to implement the program assume all risk of liability associated
with implementing the BOKS program at your school.
We believe all employees have the right to be treated with respect and dignity. We support your right
to work in an environment free from unlawful discrimination and harassment, including sexual
harassment. We will not tolerate inappropriate conduct or harassment based on an employee’s age,
color, mental or physical disability, gender, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, marital
status, military service, race, religion, ancestry, genetic information, sexual orientation or any other
legally protected characteristic. It is illegal to engage in such conduct when it affects an employee’s
employment conditions, interferes unreasonably with his or her work performance, or creates an
intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.
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Introduction
History
In the fall of 2009, a group of moms got together to launch a before school physical activity program
at Memorial Elementary School in Natick, MA. The pilot program ran twice a week for 40 minutes
before school. Eighty students, kindergarten through fourth grade, voluntarily participated in the
program throughout the school year. The pilot program was very successful and generated positive
feedback from students, teachers and parents. BOKS, formerly known as Fit Kidz Get Up & Go, was
born!
The Need
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous
physical activity for children. Unfortunately, on average most elementary school age students receive
only 50-100 minutes of physical activity at school each week. Dr. John Ratey of Harvard Medical
School and author of Spark states that, “exercise is the single most powerful tool that we have to
optimize the function of our brains.” Ratey’s studies and several others in California and Illinois
establish that moderate to vigorous physical activity stimulates brain function and creates the
physiological conditions for students to be ready to learn:
 Eleven studies published between 1967 and 2006 have found that regular physical activity is
associated with improved academic performance (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2009)
 A 2006 study found that children who were active either at home, school or on a sports team
were 20% more likely than their inactive counterparts to earn an “A” in Math or English
(Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2009)
 A 2011 study found that as overweight 7-11 year olds increased physical activity over a 13 week
period, their intelligence scores increased 3.8 points more than their inactive counterparts
(Medical College of Georgia, 2011)
 Researchers have found that regular physical activity improves mood and cognitive activity
(Ballard et al, 2005)
Mission
BOKS’ mission is to promote the profound impact of physical activity on a child’s mind, body,
and community. BOKS is designed to have a positive impact on children; academically, behaviorally,
socially and physically, by increasing their opportunities for physical activity and providing
information about healthy nutrition. Through participation in BOKS, we hope children will be more
physically active and learn about healthy habits that can last a lifetime.
Curriculum
The BOKS program is based on functional fitness; children will move their bodies in a way that will
assist them in completing everyday activities. Some examples of functional fitness include running,
jumping, lifting and throwing. The 12 week curriculum includes moderate to vigorous activity by
incorporating running, games and other fun physical activities into each class to target the three
different components of movement (aerobic or cardiovascular; muscle-strengthening; and bonestrengthening) in a friendly, non-competitive and fun environment.
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Philosophy for Training
Four Core BOKS Values
Team Work
The BOKS program places a strong emphasis on the concept of teamwork, thus team activities
and games are a large part of the program. There are several reasons why BOKS focuses on
teamwork:
 While children can strive to give their best effort, a child’s contribution to the team is equally
important.
 The BOKS program wants children to maintain motivation within the framework of a team.
To help foster this, it is important to make sure children keep a positive attitude.
 We want the children to appreciate that winning is not the only object of the game, but rather
to put forth their best effort.
 These opportunities will help children develop problem solving skills and promote social
interactions that will help them cope with different situations in life and break traditional peer
groups.
Trainers can model for the children by cheering for all teams and providing strategies for team
members to work together. Trainers can also encourage children to step in to help a struggling team
member. At the end of every relay race or game, the trainers can encourage teammates to
congratulate each other’s efforts. In order to assist in separating the children into teams, we
suggest finding a methodology to randomly select teams each class. Each team will include boys and
girls of varying ages and abilities. At morning drop off, the children can be provided with different
colored stickers, bracelets or washable markings to designate a child’s team for the day.
Individual Performance
We believe individual performance is a key contributor to confidence and self-esteem. The children will
be strongly encouraged to give their best efforts during individual activities, such as running. We
encourage trainers to track individual improvements over the course of the session. For example, at
the beginning and the end of each session, the trainers can have the children perform a timed run as
a benchmark for ability and improvement. By creating the desire for personal improvement, children will
be inspired to work as hard as they can.
Leadership Opportunities
BOKS strives to provide and promote leadership opportunities in the program. Children can gain
confidence and develop a sense of self-worth by being given additional responsibilities or
privileges during class. For example, children can assist trainers by helping with class set up,
demonstrating movements, aiding with equipment, helping another child in need or taking an
active role in group discussions. These opportunities should be fostered and developed whenever
possible throughout the program; it is up to the trainer to make sure children have an equal opportunity
to obtain a leadership role.
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Fun
We want children to look forward to BOKS. Why else would they get up and come to school early? It is
our goal to create a program that all children can enjoy regardless of their age or ability level. All
the activities, movements, skills and running can and should be fun for the participants. Please
try to remember that if something isn’t working, put your plans aside and play a game, change things
up, keep the children moving and smiling.
Program Details
Set Yourself Up for Success
When you consider how to organize your program, it is important to make sure you set yourself up
for success. The most important things to make your BOKS class successful are SAFETY,
COMMUNICATION and FUN!
 Child safety is your number 1 priority at all times.
 Communication is key between all parties in the program, trainers, children, parents, teachers,
school administrators and community members.
 Fun is what it is all about – that is why the kids get up early to come!!
If you start your program small, 2 days a week with 40 participants, you can always expand your
program. It is much harder to go in the opposite direction. You want to make sure that you have
assembled a team of passionate trainers that are all willing to share responsibilities to make the
program work.
It is important to read through all the materials we have included on the trainer hub prior to beginning
the program in your school. The documents have been carefully created and address many of
your questions and concerns or may help you consider things you have not yet thought about. The
most important document to review and understand prior to launching your program is the “Roll Out
Procedures Checklist”. This checklist walks you through all the details that you may consider
before launching BOKS. The checklist starts 2 months prior to launch through day before,
continuing with suggestions while the program is in session. This is a general guide and can be
tailored to meet the needs of your school.
We strongly encourage you to read the book Spark, by Dr. John Ratey. This book was the inspiration
for the development of the BOKS program.
Awareness and Outreach
Once you have approval from the appropriate decision maker, you want to attract as many children
as possible to participate. Consider presenting the program details:
 At school events: PTO meetings and fundraisers, district or town based physical activity events.
 Send out an electronic e-blast or distribute a take-home flyer via backpacks.
 Create your flyers, brochures, bulletin board and program summaries for your school.
 Send home information in the children’s backpacks or school newsletter announcing the
program several weeks before the registration materials are sent home.
 Post information about the program on your school’s website.
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
Mention program details in the morning announcements.
Determine Space
BOKS kids are very active in class so it is important to determine an adequate class space both for
both inside and outside. Additionally, we suggest you measure out a 400 meter course for the
participants to run on a regular basis. This course can be utilized as the physical activity
metric/assessment tool to see how the program is impacting the children.
Sessions and Days
It is important to determine when the BOKS session will run at your school. You may choose to offer
one, two or more sessions, with varying number of weeks per session or run the program
continuously throughout the year. You must determine how many classes per week your session(s)
will offer. At a minimum we suggest BOKS run 2 days a week, for a minimum of 30 minutes
(preferably 40 minutes) for the participants to get the full benefits of physical activity prior to
academics. A session can have more than 2 classes per week depending on your situation. Please
make allow sufficient time to set up the session, determine and secure adequate staffing and register
participants.
Daily and Weekly Programming
BOKS has created lesson plans which include a daily plan (3 times per week) for a 12 week session.
The lesson plan package also includes a lesson plan template. This template allows you the flexibility
to take the activities, movements and games from the curriculum and combine them with your own
unique ideas to create customized school lesson plans. A skill of the week calendar works in
conjunction with the daily lesson plan to supplement the curriculum. The skill descriptions provide you
with technical explanations and cues to give the participants. All plans and templates are suggestions
based on the experiences we have had in both the suburban and urban school settings. You should
plan to customize your curriculum to fit your school’s needs.
Class Size
Depending on the size of your facility, you should determine how many participants the program
can accommodate. We believe that the trainer to participant ratio should be 1:20 at a minimum.
Accordingly, we suggest setting class sizes in multiples of 20, 40, 60 or 80 participants, to 1, 2, 3 or 4
adult trainers, respectively.
Age Groups
BOKS is designed for elementary school aged children, kindergarten through fifth grade. At some
schools, the program has been limited to children in certain grades due to other before school activities
or space constraints. You should tailor the program to fit your school’s needs. Another option is to run
the program for different age groups. For example, grades K-2 could run two days a week and grades
3 -5 could run 2 other days during the week. If the school is grades K-8, allowing students in grades 68 to act as junior trainers is a great way to involve the whole school.
Start Time
We suggest that your BOKS program begin approximately one hour prior to the start of the school day.
It is important to consult with your school principal to confirm the timing of the program. You will need
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to make sure that your participants have sufficient time to be dropped off in the morning (5 – 10
minutes), actual class time (30 – 40 minutes), and transition to class and/or breakfast if applicable (5 –
10 minutes.) We suggest that you establish a routine or schedule right away so the participants know
what to expect when they attend class.
Registration
Suggested registration materials are included in Block 4. Registration forms must include all
pertinent information about the participant including emergency contact information and medical
information. It is important to provide potential participants with detailed instructions about when and
where to return the registration forms. Registration can be done in a variety of different ways: Lottery
system, with a waiting list for overflow; first come first served or principal/school guidance
counselor/nurse can work to specifically identify at risk students to participate in BOKS. Once you
have established your participants, you can send out a Welcome Letter and Weather Protocol
documents, so parents the specific details surrounding the program. It is a good idea to share the
participant/contact list with your school nurse so that he/she can cross reference it to the emergency
information she has on file as well.
Note: The legal terms found at the end of the Registration Form are based on Massachusetts Law as
that is that state where the 501c3 is registered.
Equipment
The critical equipment needed to run BOKS is pretty minimal. You should have cones, balls, jump
ropes, stopwatches, whistles and a first aid kit. A “Suggested List of Equipment”, with quantities is
included in Block 1. You can purchase these items from our preferred vendor, S&S worldwide at
boksssww.com or purchase them on your own.
Insurance
It is important to make sure the BOKS program is insured, check with your school administrators
and/or legal counsel to determine a policy that works best for your community. In many situations,
BOKS is covered under the school’s insurance policy.
Budgeting
BOKS can be run on a volunteer basis, utilizing the school’s existing equipment. However, if you
choose to pay the trainers and/or buy equipment, we have provided a sample budget in Block 1 that
lists out all costs you should consider during your planning process. You may find that your program
has additional costs or does not need to utilize funds in certain areas. Careful budgeting will help to
ensure the success of your program.
Sponsors
Choosing a sponsor to support your program is an important decision. You want to make sure the
sponsor will uphold the reputation of your school, students, community and the overall mission of
BOKS. Please review the sponsor guidelines in Block 3 before you approach a potential company.
Incentives/Trinkets
From experience, participants LOVE to be rewarded for their hard efforts. You may want to consider
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offering trinkets or incentives to motivate the class to put forth their best efforts, particularly related to
the running component of the program. Trinkets can also be used as an incentive to improve class
attendance or participation. A great website to consider is www.fitnessfinders.net.
T-shirts and other Promotional Items
Many schools want t-shirts as an incentive for participants; BOKS t-shirts will be available for order via
a link on the trainer hub. Please log in for more details.
Promotional items, such as a poster pack and running charts are available for order via Ricoh, a
global printing company. A link to the order form is available on the trainer hub. These items can be
used to help promote BOKS around the school and in the community.
Assessment Tools
BOKS promotes the powerful link between before-school physical activity and improved academic
performance, it is possible that your school administration, parents, sponsors and/or grantors will want
to see data to support this hypothesis. BOKS has developed both physical and academic assessment
tools that can help provide this information to your community. The administration of the
assessment tools (surveys and metrics) is not mandatory, but strongly encouraged. These
assessment tools are meant to show the results of your program, but feel free to share the final
results with BOKS headquarters. All materials related to assessment are included in Block 7.
Surveys
There are four surveys included in the program:
 teacher survey
 parent survey
 participant survey
 nutrition survey
Surveys can be administered manually (paper copies) or you can develop and on-line survey
using survey monkey or another similar program.
400 Meter Run
At the beginning and the end of each session, we encourage the participants to perform a
physical benchmark or metric, a 400 meter (1/4 mile) run, to measure the changes in physical activity
level and the improvement with each child. Children complete this benchmark during the first few
weeks of class to establish a baseline level of performance. Throughout the session, we hope
children will improve their endurance by regularly participating in the class running activities and other
timed runs. At the end of the session, children can repeat the timed 400 meter run to measure their
improvement over the session. Children will be divided by age group to provide a less competitive,
more relaxed attitude. Children will be encouraged to try their hardest, working towards improving the
previous benchmark, rather than racing their peers. A very specific protocol has been developed to
ensure accurate and reliable results. Please review Block 7 for details.
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Academic testing
You may also want to consider an academic benchmark. You can speak with your school principal
or superintendent about reviewing reading or standardized test results.
Trainer Hub
The Trainer Hub is a unique resource offered to the BOKS community. By clicking on the trainer hub
tab at the bottom of BOKS’ website (www.bokskids.org) and using your school’s unique username
and password, you gain immediate access to BOKS documents and resources. Each school is
assigned one username and password after signing the BOKS pledge and BOKS has received
confirmation from the school principal at info@bokskids.org. It is recommended that the Lead Trainer
manages the account.
Once logged in, it is highly recommended that you watch the Trainer Hub training video to understand
its full capabilities. The link to the video can be found on the bottom left of the screen. If you
have questions, please email info@bokskids.org.
Trainer Information
There are different ways to run BOKS:
 Run a program at no cost; a volunteer based program.
 Charge participants a nominal fee for the program to cover the costs mentioned above.
 Apply for a grant with a local agency to secure necessary program funds.
 Look for local companies to sponsor the program.
 Ask the principal or PTO for funding as some could be available in their budgets.
 Fundraise.
The “Ways to Implement BOKS” summary is included in our school PowerPoint presentation available
in the downloadable starter pack via the BOKS website or in Block 1. The summary addresses
considerations to review before choosing a model.
There are a variety of staffing options for your BOKS program. You can hire trainers or use volunteers.
We strongly recommend you maintain a 1:20 adult to child ratio. Trainers do not need to be
certified; rather they need to be a positive voice who can manage a large group of children. Anyone
can be trained on the BOKS program and run the program voluntarily or as paid trainers. The
decision is yours based on your school community and financial resources.
Sources for trainers include:
 Teachers, school staff members, physical education teachers.
 Local health and wellness programs or gyms.
 Local colleges to find students that may be interested in volunteering or working to fulfill an
internship requirement.
 Parents or active community members (a classroom mom).
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The most important choice you need to make is identifying an individual to lead the program. This
individual is the Lead Trainer (LT) and may in fact be you! Ideally, the LT commits to lead BOKS
throughout the session and acts as the primary liaison between program and school by
coordinating communication and the dissemination of information to principal, teachers, parents and
children. Some schools choose one person to be the LT while others have different individuals
responsible for the programming and administrative components of the program. A more detailed
description of the Lead Trainer requirements is listed in the Job Descriptions document in Block 4.
School Trainers (ST) and/or volunteers are needed to help run the program and make it successful.
These can be paid or volunteer positions. General responsibilities include assisting during and outside
of class by understanding weekly lesson plans and being aware of his/her designated responsibilities
during each BOKS class. Detailed job descriptions are listed in the Job Descriptions document in
Block 4. For the safety of the students, all individuals much complete a criminal background check.
After signing the BOKS pledge, trainers may attend a training session at Reebok Corporate
headquarters in Canton, MA. Training sessions are scheduled on a quarterly basis. Check the
Trainer Hub for more details on trainings. Although a live, interactive training is recommended
training videos have been created and are available via the Trainer Hub.
As a best practice, we recommend all trainers are CPR/AED certified by an authorized American
Heart Association representative. At a minimum, please consider having at least one certified trainer.
Contact your local hospital or fire department as there are often classes provided for your community at
a minimal cost.
Suggested Policies
Attendance
At least one trainer should greet children and parents and take attendance at drop off. Children should not
be left unattended at drop off. Children will sign in and based on your class structure, may receive a colored
wrist band, washable marking, sticker or gel bracelet to help form teams for group activities. Please
establish a protocol for children walking to school or being dropped off without an adult. Your attendance
data may be tracked on our trainer hub.
Backpacks
Pre-determine and announce an area for dropping off backpacks and personal items. If all personal
belongings are kept together, the risk of loss or theft should be minimal. You should determine an
outdoor and indoor location for drop off. Consider having children place their belongings by grade.
Shoes and Attire
Children should come to school ready to run! If you notice that a child is repeatedly not dressed
appropriately, please follow up with the parent or school staff member. On rainy days or during colder
months, children need to be respectful of the school property/gym facilities. If possible, children should
bring a dry pair of sneakers on BOKS days.
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Bathroom and Water Breaks
Encourage children to bring labeled water bottles, provide water bottles or bring a pitcher and cups to
class. Allow water breaks when needed.
Participation
A child’s participation in all class activities is important to maximize physical, social, academic
and behavioral impact. All children should be encouraged to participate in every aspect of class. If a
child is resistant to a certain activity or exercise, consider giving him/her the option to run laps,
jump rope or perform individual drills until he or she feels ready to join his or her team again. Sitting
out should be a last resort, only after all other efforts have been exhausted. Reassuring a child that
his/her favorite game is coming up may help to motivate the child. Additionally, providing the child with
a leadership opportunity to demonstrate a movement or help with equipment may inspire the child to
participate. If older students (6-8 graders) help during class, pair one of them up with the child to
encourage and motivate to participate.
Transition Times
BOKS strives to keep children moving as much as possible during class. The goal is to provide at least 20
to 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each class. Please make your best efforts to minimize down
time between class activities. Careful planning and assigning specific roles to trainers will assist in keeping
the children physically active. It is important to think a few steps ahead to keep the class flowing smoothly.
BOKS Kid of the Week
A BOKS Kid of the Week has shown positive qualities during the week. This is a child who is Friendly, puts
in a good Effort, has a good Attitude and is a Team-player. In other words, the child’s FEET have
performed a FEAT. The BOKS Kid of the Week can be announced in class. The child will have the
opportunity to demonstrate movements, lead his/her team for the day or be given additional leadership
responsibilities. Some programs that have difficulties deciding on the BOKS Kid of the Week therefore they
choose a BOKS Kid of the Day. Try to ensure each child received the award once each session.
BOKS ROCKS Cheer
We want to motivate BOKS participants to put forth their best effort. Each class can start with a BOKS
cheer before the warm up activity. The children and trainers will circle up, putting their right hand inside the
circle. Everyone will chant, “BOKS ROCKS” three times, first quietly, then a little louder and then really
loud. At the end they will raise their right hand up and do a little fist pump.
Getting Attention
Receiving undivided attention can be a challenge, here are some techniques BOKS trainers can use:
 Blow a whistle: All trainers should be provided with whistles. Explain to the participants what each
whistle blow means and what they need to do when they hear the whistle, since sometimes a random
whistle blow is confusing and won’t yield the desired results.
 Clap: Another way to get the children’s attention is to do the BOKS clap. (Slow clap 2 times, fast clap 3
times). The children will be expected to repeat the clap back to the trainers and then become quiet and
pay attention.
 “If you can hear me, put your hand on your head.” Children will then freeze AND keep their hands to
themselves.
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
“Look Up, Look Down, Look at Me.” This works especially well if participants are circled up and are
having a hard time focusing.
It is important to establish your class rules and safety guidelines and remind the children about the cues and
the rules at the beginning of every class. Remind children that they cannot leave class for any reason without
telling an adult. Teach the children the command FREEZE on the first day of class for emergencies.
FREEZE should be used sparingly to stay effective as it is important if someone is in danger or a
situation is out of control. Essentially, tell them to FREEZE like a statue.
Behavior
Poor behavior must not be tolerated. As mentioned above, children should be reminded of the class rules and
expectations at the beginning of each class. The trainers need to show control at all times. A
misbehaving child may just need re-direction; try giving them a task or job and see if that helps. If a child
continues to misbehave and disrupt the class, you can institute a “3 strikes” method of disciplining. First
offense/strike = warning, second offense/strike = strong warning, third offense/strike = child sits out for a
portion or the remainder of class. Repeated poor behavior can be discussed with school personnel or
parents/guardians and appropriate actions taken, accordingly.
Tagging Techniques
Many of the BOKS games include tagging; it is important to explain, demonstrate and remind children of our
tagging technique, a light touch tag. When tagging, children may use the fingertips only of one hand to tag
another child below the shoulder.
First Aid
A fully stocked first aid kit including ice packs should be available at all times, particularly if the school
nurse is not at school during BOKS class If a child requires care or extra attention, please have a
volunteer or trainer attend to the child. If the nature of the injury is more severe, the trainers should use their
best judgment to determine what to do. As appropriate, please contact the child’s parent/guardian from the
emergency contact list or take the child to the nurse when she arrives. In emergency situations, or
when in doubt, call 911 immediately. A copy of the BOKS Emergency Action Plan should be on your
clipboard at all times and the procedures should be followed in the event of an emergency found in
Block 8. Please make sure to fill out an accident report to report any injuries to the nurse and the child’s
parent/guardian. This is an important step to take from the liability perspective. Lastly, please consider
reporting any head injuries to parents/guardians and nurse immediately.
Inhalers
Please discuss a policy for inhalers with your school nurse in case a participant needs assistance during
class.
Illness
The BOKS illness policy corresponds with that of the school district. In the event that a child who is
visibly ill comes to class, please do your best to limit exposure to other children. A sick child would likely be
uninterested in participating in class and could sit out and watch until the nurse arrives at school or a
parent/guardian can be reached to pick up the child.
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Parent Communication
You may consider providing families with a weekly or monthly newsletter about the program. You
can incorporate a BOKS section into an already existing school newsletter. The newsletter could be
done virtually or by hardcopy depending on your school’s policy. You can include: information about
weekly happenings; reminders; the weekly nutrition tip and the BOKS Kid of the Week. You could
utilize our BOKS Buzz monthly newsletter as a communication tool for parents which will be uploaded
to the trainer hub monthly, just download to your computer and send!
Class Techniques
 Keep it Simple! – Try to keep your language and explanations simple and easy for the
children (and other trainers) to understand. Similarly, when setting up daily activities, keep
those simple too. For example, try to limit the number of movements in an obstacle course or
race to 3.
 Mirror, Mirror – The children are going to follow you or follow whoever is demonstrating
different movements. They are not going to listen to you, but rather watch you. Please
make sure your demonstrators are doing what you would like them to do!
 Make cues easy and direct – Try for 3 words or less, i.e. keep arms straight, chest up, knees
out, legs straight etc. Each skill of the week exercise has 3 key points of performance to help
you make your explanations easy for you and the children to follow.
 Keep your cues positive – Tell the children what you want them to do. For example, say
“Keep your head up” instead of “Don’t put your head down”.
 Back Pocket Plan – If a class does not respond well to the lesson plan and/or
activities have a “Back Pocket Plan” to keep the students moving. A back pocket
plan can be the students’ favorite game, dancing, favorite relay race, etc.
 Silly Time – There will be days or times that the children just can’t focus. Let them be silly
and GO NUTS. Give them 30 seconds or a minute to do a crazy dance or movement and get it
out!
 Lesson Plan Ideas – Feel free to make your classes theme oriented or bring in props. Some
ideas include: pajama day; silly hair or hat day; school color day; a sports team day etc.
 Find something they love to make them work – If the skill of the week or the running is
more challenging for some children, remind them that their favorite game is coming up shortly,
to keep them engaged and motivated.
 Keep Things Novel – You can change your lesson plan or activity in the middle. Maybe you
have them start running a 400 or an 800 meter run, but part way through you decide to do
wind sprints instead. Just changing up the activity keeps things fun for the children.
 Try to think ahead and give children options – If you know that a movement or activity
might be challenging for a child, give some options. For example, if your relay race starts with
somersaults, less conditioned children could start with 360 degree turns instead.
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BOKS Bits
As a compliment to the physical activity component, BOKS curriculum includes a nutritional component for
each class. The “BOKS Bits” are organized by weekly themes and include fun games and important
information about nutrition. BOKS bits should be delivered by the same trainer at the end of each class.
Delivering the BOKS bits in an accurate (reading the bits as written) and appropriate (consistent and
confident) manner ensures consistent messaging.
Each week’s lesson builds on knowledge provided during previous classes. The goal of the BOKS bits are
to improve the participants’ knowledge of nutrition, therefore they are written in a format that is easy to
deliver and easy for the participants to understand. In turn, we hope that the children will learn to make
good nutritional choices. Concepts discussed in class can be reinforced if you choose to send out a
program newsletter to participating families. Please remember to be respectful of brands when
discussing nutrition.
The bits have been written in conjunction with Michael Leidig, RD, LDN, CPT the Clinical Director of the
Center for Youth Wellness at Tufts Floating Hospital for Children in Boston, MA.
(www.floatinghospital.org/cyw.)
Don’t underestimate the power of this short message at the end of each class. Living an active life and
developing a healthy lifestyle incorporates nutrition. The messaging is supposed to be a guide to help
reach this goal. The BOKS bits are contained in Block 6.
How to Get Started – First Day Plan of Action
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Class Structure - Your class structure will be determined based upon reviewing all of the
information in the Program Details section of the manual above. Review the lesson plan as
more structure considerations may evolve. With your class structure in place, you can now
move onto the logistics of the program.
Attendance – Have at least one, if not 2 people greeting participants. One person should check
off the name and the other person can assign them to a group based on a number, color,
(different colored bracelets or washable markers can be used). Please group the children
randomly; although this is hard at the beginning of a session, it helps participants develop
teamwork throughout the program.
Drop backpacks and jackets – Make sure children drop their bags and jackets in the predesignated area. If children have wet boots/shoes, encourage them to walk on the outside of
the class space and NOT through it. Consider having the children stash their belongings by
grade. This will be easier for dismissal. You can also make signs for each grade.
o Free Play – You should have things for the children to do! Put some balls and jumpropes out. Have trainers walk around to make sure children are playing. Try to get kids
started on an activity. If they don’t want to use balls or jump ropes, the children could
have a hopping contest or a handstand contest. This is a great and easy way for
volunteers to get involved.
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Starting Class – Blow the whistle to get the children’s attention. Ask the children to line up
against the wall and sit down. You need to explain to them how you will get everyone’s
attention. Use your whistle or teach them the Clap.
Explain Safety and behavior– You have the children’s attention; give them as much
information as possible RIGHT NOW! Tell them they cannot leave the gym without telling a
trainer or volunteer. Establish your program rules and tell them to the kids at the beginning of
every class. Make them simple enough for the kids to repeat them back to you. Remind the
children about their behavior – 3 strikes and you’re out or whatever policy your school follows.
Motivate them to want to be the BOKS Kid of the Week. Be concise.
Tell them about the day – “We are going to do a fun warm up game, then we will run, then
we will do relay races, then we will play another game and then we will cool down and have a
fun talk about healthy food.” If you establish a schedule from the start, the children will know
what to expect and follow your directions more easily.
Things you need to focus on –
o Time - wear your watch, plan how long everything should take and try to stick to your
schedule
o Minimize transition time – think about how you will end the current activity and move
to the next one. Tell other trainers/volunteers how they can help you
o Keep it fun – smile a lot and give lots of high fives, good jobs etc…positive energy is
contagious!
“BOKS Rocks” Cheer – Everyone is together, do the cheer to get them pumped up and ready
to go.
Start warm up game – Have the children gather around you while you explain the game. Try to
do so without. Use your trainers to help demonstrate what you need to do in the game. Make
sure do so without reading your notes. The children want to see you are confident! This will
help you earn their respect.
o Finish the warm up game – Wrap up while it is still fun, not when it gets boring. Think
about how to get the children into the next activity, which is a running activity. Tell the
children where to go when they are done with the warm up.
Running related activity – The primary activity during this section of BOKS is a 400 meter or
¼ mile run. Depending on space and if you are inside due to weather there are many other
running related activities. If the children are going to be doing races, tell them to get into
groups by their colored marking. Try to have a trainer set up the cones during the warm up
game to make the transition easier. Have a trainer standing at each cone to gather the children.
o If you are going to run around the gym, have the children start at each corner and
stagger by grade. This will help keep the little children from getting trampled. Consider
putting cones on the perimeter of the gym to keep the children from cutting corners.
You can also use a pacer or leader to head up the kids and everyone must follow
behind. Playing music is a great way to keep the children moving. After the children
finish running, they may want a drink of water. Have a trainer help at the bubbler! If the
children don’t get a drink, think about how to have them stop and focus on you before
the next activity.
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Stations or relay races – Stations are a really good, controlled way to keep the children
moving. Have a trainer at each station. The trainer shows the group the movement and
stays at the station. The children will move around to 4 or 5 stations, depending on the size
of your space. Stations should be separated by color group. Stay at each station for a minute
or two and then blow the whistle to have the children rotate. If the children have not taken a
drink already, one station could be a drink station. Relay races work well too. Just make sure
the activity is not too complex so that the line keeps moving. You can have trainers suggest the
children do jumping jacks or jog in place if the line is long.
o Finish the Stations or relay races – Again, wrap up while it is still fun. Think about
how to get the children to the final game. Do you want to explain the game while they
are still in the station or the relay line? If not, circle the children up and explain quickly.
Think about how you plan to split up the children for the game. If you are going to divide
by grades, do this now while the children are lined up or in stations, not after you’ve
explained the game.
End of Class Game – Explain the game quickly, have a trainer demonstrate as needed. If it is
a tag game, remind children about a light touch tag. Make sure that you clearly explain even
the most basic rules as many children may not be familiar with them. (i.e. explain what it
means to go out of bounds/stay inside the boundaries.) Let them play the game for as long
as it is fun and time allows. Keep them wanting more.
o Blow the whistle to end the game – Tell the children exactly what you want them to
do. Line up or circle up for the cool down.
Cool Down – Again, have the children in the right spot – have one trainer lead the cool
down. The children will all follow.
Nutrition – Make it fun and try to keep it light!! Smile a lot; be animated when you go through the
“BOKS Bit”. Encourage the children to participate. When you finish, again, tell the children what you
want them to do: “Please stay seated until I call your grade or color group.”
o Relaxing Deep Breaths – Right before the children leave, have them take a few relaxing
deep breaths before they go on their way. This will help to make sure they are really calm for
class.
o Tell them they did a great job! – Positive reinforcement works wonders – HAVE FUN!
Dismissal – Dismiss by grade or color group. Remind the children to take water bottles,
sweatshirts/jackets, backpacks, etc. Tell them to look for missing things! Tell the children where to go,
like you need to go right to breakfast if you are going to eat. Or if you go to class, you cannot eat. If
breakfast is served, encourage the children to participate! If there is not a breakfast program, tell the
children where to go to transition to class. Please make sure you have worked with your principal to
figure out the exact logistics for the end of class.
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Conclusion
Congratulations! By reading through this manual and implementing BOKS in your school, you are
making a difference! Feel good about this decision. Understand that it will take some time to get
used to managing a large group of children. Your patience, dedication and hard work will be
rewarded by the impact you will make on the participating children, the school environment and their
home environment as well.
The bottom line message is that children need to be active and have fun to stay healthy. Children
who play well, do well! If you can accomplish this by having the children run around for a little while
and then play some fun games, you have achieved this goal!
We want to hear back from you. Please visit our BOKS Facebook page for updates, articles and to
post pictures. Update BOKS Headquarters on your successes. Be a BOKSSTAR and have a blast!
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BOKS Lesson Plan Overview and Samples – BKFC Reference #8
Introduction
The BOKS lesson plans are designed so that all participants are continuously moving with
moderate to vigorous intensity for at least 20 to 30 minutes during class. Try to keep participants in
constant motion starting from the warm-up until the end of class game whenever possible. BOKS
provides 2 sessions of lesson plans, three days a week over a 12 week period. In session 1
the curriculum utilizes full body stretching, line drills and warm up games. In session 2 o f t h e
curriculum, the warm up activities change to maximize movement within a class. 3 different formats of
locomotor movements are introduced which alternate every other week. These 3 formats are
locomotor lines, locomotor group, and full class perimeter locomotor movements.
The biggest difference between the lesson plans from Session 1 and Session 2 are the warm up
activities. The warm-ups in Session 1 include games and the warm-ups in Session 2 include locomotor
movements.
The Lead Trainer will be responsible for following and/or creating the daily lesson plans for his/he
school, using the lesson plans in the BOKS book or the lesson plan template and the skill of the
week calendar. This freedom allows the Lead Trainer to decide what games and movements work best
with his/her class. The program may look very different at each school based upon physical layout,
the breakout of kids’ grades, the ratio of boys and girls and the number of volunteers helping with
the program. We want to make sure the kids are having FUN and PLAYING while getting physically
active. If your lesson plan is not working for any reason, consider modifying the plan by starting the
game earlier in class or incorporating an extra game at the end of class.
BOKS lesson plans have the following components:
Drop off/set up (5-10 minutes)
Participants are greeted by a BOKS trainer who takes attendance and may distribute a colored wrist
band, washable marking or sticker to divide the class into teams. Kids can enjoy free play with friends
and socializing before class starts. Other trainers are working to set up the space for class.
Meeting (5 minutes)
Set the standard for how BOKS will run for the session. Review the appropriate BOKS behavior and
safety and announce the BOKS Kid of the Week. Briefly introduce the Skill of the Week and why it is
important. Then, review the Class Agenda and finish with the BOKS Rocks! Cheer!
Warm up (5-10 minutes)
The kids will do an active warm up at with a moderate level of exertion.
It is very important that the kids get a good warm up since we want them to be constantly
moving for the next 20 minutes.
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Running and/or running-related activity (10 minutes)
We strongly encourage the kids to run during every class. We encourage you to run outside even
in the winter.
Skill of the Week (10 minutes)
Every week all BOKS participants practice a skill of the week. The first day, they are introduced to the
skill and shown the proper form. In the subsequent days of the week, the skill can be practiced
through stations, relay races and obstacle courses.
Game (5-10 minutes)
This can be a team or individual game. Trainers and volunteers should promote sportsmanship,
encourage the kids to try their hardest and have fun.
Cool down, BOKS Bit, Wrap Up/Transition (5 minutes)
A trainer leads the kids in a cool down stretch with some deep breaths. The lead trainer delivers an
interactive discussion about the nutrition tip of the week. kids collect their belongings and transition
to class or school breakfast, as applicable. We suggest dismissing kids by grade: youngest first,
oldest last.
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BOKS Sample Lesson Plan
This Week’s Skill: Sit Ups
Drop Off / Set Up (10 minutes)
 Drop off, check-in, receive color designation, put backpacks in designated grade area
 Free play (with trainers and volunteers)
Meeting (2 minutes)
 Review appropriate BOKS behavior and safety
 Remind kids about the BOKS Kid of the Week. Briefly state what the Skill of the Week is.
 Review Class Agenda
 BOKS Rocks! Cheer!
Warm Up (5 minutes)
 Traffic Light
Running Related Activities (10 minutes)
 BOKS Sprints
 Skill of the week: Sit Ups! Why? Works abdominal muscles and posture.
 Introduce sit ups and demonstrate the proper form, discuss 3 key points of performance.
 Have kids partner up and practice 10 sit ups.
 Stations: for 1 minute each
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sit ups
Jump rope
Hula Hoop
Jumping Jacks
Water
Game (5 minutes)
 BOKS Up and Down
Cool Down / Nutrition Talk (5 minutes)
 Deep Breaths
 BOKS Bits (Nutrition discussion)
 Have the kids line up, take a deep breath and dismiss by groups to go to class or breakfast.
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BOKS Sample Lesson Plan Session 2
This Week’s Skill: Jumps
Drop Off / Set Up (10 minutes)
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Arrive, check-in, and receive color designation
Put backpacks in designated grade area
Free play (with trainers and volunteers)
Trainers set up for class
Meeting (2 minutes)
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Review appropriate BOKS behavior and safety
Remind kids about the BOKS Kid of the Week
Briefly state what the Skill of the Week is
Review Class Agenda
BOKS Rocks! Cheer!
Warm Up (5 minutes)
 Locomotor Movements – Locomotion Style with everyone moving at the same time in the same
direction (counterclockwise)
Running Related Activities (10 minutes)
 BOKS Chase
 Skill of the Week: Jumping! Squat jumps, tuck jumps and broad jumps. Why? So we can get over and
around objects
 Ask the BOKS Kid of the Week to demonstrate the 3 types of jumps
 Partner Challenge Ladder with all 3 jumps (1 of each, then 2 of each, then 3 of each, alternating
partners)
Game (5 minutes)
 BOKS Baseball
Cool Down / Nutrition Talk (5 minutes)
 Full Body Stretch and deep breaths
 BOKS Bits (nutrition discussion)
 Have the kids line up, take a deep breath and dismiss by groups to go to class or breakfast
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Sample BOKS Bit - Snacks
Today’s Topic: Healthy Snack Tests (Topic 1 of 3)
Objective
To discuss how to test if a snack is a super healthy one.
Discussion Questions
1. I am going to tell you a way to help you choose a super healthy snack.
2. Take your snack out of the package or the wrapper if it has one.
3. Go over to the kitchen sink and turn on the water, run your snack under the water!!!!!
4. Can you still eat it??
5. If yes, it is probably a super choice; if no, maybe you can make a different choice.
6. What are some things that would be ok to eat after you run under water? Fruits and vegetables,
7.
8.
such as apples, grapes, strawberries, carrots and peppers, hard boiled eggs, cheese sticks, nuts (if
no allergies) ….
What would not be ok to eat? Cookies, potato chips, donuts, Twinkies ….
Another test could be if the food you are eating gets stuck in your teeth, then it is not a good choice
either. (This can be in response to lollipops or candy being ok to eat after running them under
water.)
Homework Assignment
Think about this when you get home from school today and see if you can make a really super choice!
Note to Trainer: BOKS Bits should be delivered by the same trainer at either the beginning or the end of
each class. The primary purpose of presenting the BOKS bit is to increase the children’s knowledge and
ideally increased knowledge will positively impact their behavior. The BOKS Bits will be reinforced in
upcoming weeks. Delivering the BOKS Bits in an accurate (reading the bits as written below) and
appropriate (consistent and confident) manner ensures consistent messaging throughout schools
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Sample BOKS Bit - Drinks
Today’s Topic: Water (Topic 1 of 3)
Objective
To discuss the importance of water consumption.
1. Water is the most important thing you can put into your body to stay healthy and fit. All living things
need water to survive.
2. Did you know that about 2/3 of our body is made up of water?
3. Thirst is your body’s way of telling you that it needs more water.
4. When are the best times to drink? Before, during and after exercise and whenever you feel thirsty.
5. Question-How does your body lose water???
 Your body loses water through sweat, going to the bathroom and even breathing.
6. Question- Who knows what it means to be dehydrated???
 “Dehydration” means lack of water.
7. We say you are dehydrated when you don’t have enough water for your body to function at its best.
8. It is important to drink water throughout the day, especially when it is hot outside and when you are
exercising.
9. What do you think about vitamin water? Is that better? NO!!!! It has lots of added sugar.
10. Whenever you have a choice of what to drink, remember nothing beats a cold glass of water!
Note to Trainer: BOKS Bits should be delivered by the same trainer at either the beginning or the end of
each class. The primary purpose of presenting the BOKS bit is to increase the children’s knowledge and
ideally increased knowledge will positively impact their behavior. The BOKS Bits will be reinforced in
upcoming weeks. Delivering the BOKS Bits in an accurate (reading the bits as written below) and
appropriate (consistent and confident) manner ensures consistent messaging throughout schools.
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Sample BOKS Bit – Games
Today’s Topic: Riddles (Topic 1 of 2)
Objective
To have fun learning about nutrition through riddles.
1.
What fruit always travels in groups of two? Answer! Pears
2.
Why did the cookie go to the doctor? Answer! It was feeling crummy
3.
What kind of beans have landed on the moon? Answer! Human beans
4.
What do you call cheese that isn't yours? Answer! Nacho cheese
5.
Which vegetable's name and first letter sound the same? Answer! Pea
6.
How can you knock over a full glass and not spill any water? Answer! When it’s filled with milk
7.
How do you make soup rich? Answer! Put 14 carrots in it.
8.
How do you make a strawberry shake? Answer! Take it to a scary movie.
9.
How does the gingerbread man make his bed? Answer! With cookie sheets.
10. What does corn say when picked? Answer! Ouch my ears.
Note to Trainer: BOKS Bits should be delivered by the same trainer at either the beginning or the end of each class.
The primary purpose of presenting the BOKS bit is to increase the children’s knowledge and ideally increased
knowledge will positively impact their behavior. The BOKS Bits will be reinforced in upcoming weeks. Delivering
the BOKS Bits in an accurate (reading the bits as written below) and appropriate (consistent and confident)
manner ensures consistent messaging throughout schools
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Skills of the Week Introduction and Calendar – BKFC Reference #9
Introduction
Every week we introduce one functional fitness skill and then work on it for the week. We
introduce skills such as pushups, different jumps, donkey kicks and more. In the curriculum
there is a skill of the week calendar (see below) that indicates what skill is done each week, the
muscles it uses, the fitness principles and how it is used in everyday life. During the first class of
the week, the skill is introduced, explained and the proper form is demonstrated. Kids should
practice the movement and trainers should move around the class to assist with form and range
of motion. During the remaining classes of the week, the skills can be practiced and reinforced
through stations, tabatas, relay races, obstacle courses and :30 sec max effort activities.
Throughout the session, the three key points of performance should be repeated to the kids
when doing the movements. Make sure your demonstrator can do the skill requested before
showing the entire class.
Below is a sample of the skills we use as well as the three key points of performance that should
be demonstrated.
Squats
Details: Set feet shoulder distance apart, send arms up, butt back, squat down so butt is below
the knees. Weight should be in heels and knees should be pushed out. Keep knees, ankles and
feet all pointing in the same direction. Then stand up straight and tall.
Key Points of Performance:
 Keep heels super-glued to the ground
 Squat deep to get your pockets below your knees
 Keep your back arched like a superhero
Plank
Details: Get into a horizontal position, resting on your elbows and toes. Keep midsection tight and body in
one straight line. Hold position without moving, pushing heals back.
Key Points of Performance:
 Keep belly and butt in a straight line
 Keep knees off the ground
 Keep weight evenly distributed between hands and feet
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Skill of the Week Calendar
The underlying reason to learn any of these movements is to be able to use the strength
developed in everyday life. This is called functional fitness.
Week
Skill
Muscles
Fitness Principles
Everyday Life
#1
Plank
G, S, CORE
Strength, Balance
Help stand up
straight/support posture
#2
Running
H, Q, G, CORE, C
Cardio, Stamina, Speed
Keep a healthy heart
#3
Metrics
Beginning of Class
Baseline
#4
Sit-ups
Core, A
Strength
Sit and stand up straight
#5
Push-ups
P, B
Strength
Push something heavy
#6
Squats
H, Q, G
Balance, Flexibility
Picking up your backpack
#7
Burpees
Whole Body
Power, endurance,
coordination
Strength/cardio at the same
time, like football
#8
Jumps (tuck, squat,
broad)
H, Q, G, C
Agility, power
Get over and around objects
#9
Walking lunges
Q, G, CORE
Accuracy
Alternating leg sports like
skiing and skating
#10
Donkey kicks
S, CORE
Balance, strength
Be upside down, hold
bodyweight
#11
Metrics and survey
End of Class
measurement
#12
End of Session
Review
FUN!
FUN!
FUN!
Key:
Hamstrings
H
Pectoral
P
Quadriceps
Q
Biceps
B
Glutes
G
Shoulders
S
Calves
C
Abdominal
A
Core
CORE
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BOKS Trainer Hub Guide – BKFC Reference #10
Welcome to the BOKS Trainer Hub
We are excited to welcome you to the BOKS community. By gaining access to the trainer hub,
you have committed to bringing BOKS to a school in your community; jumpstarting kids’ brains
and bodies for a day of learning. The BOKS team is here to help you along your journey and
the trainer hub is one of the tools we offer. This guide will help you to use the trainer hub to its
full capability. Should you have questions during the session about the program or using the
trainer hub, please post them on the forum or email info@bokskids.org. Let’s get started!
The Trainer Hub is organized by tabs, each containing different information to help you manage
your BOKS program.
 The School Information, Participant Information, and BOKS Sessions tabs each allow you
to enter information about your school, participants, and BOKS training sessions.
 The Reports Tab provides different reports to be used throughout the session.
 The Training Folders and Training Content tabs provide BOKS training resources such as
important documents and videos.
 The Forum allows you to collaborate with other trainers, post ideas, and make comments.
Entering Your Information in the Trainer Hub
When entering information, there are different field types you will be come across.
Required Fields
All fields with a red line on the left side are required fields.
Text Fields
For text fields, type in the information.
Drop-Down Lists
For drop-down lists, click on the list and select one option.
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Multi-Select Picklists
Multi-select picklists allow you to select one or more options. There is a left Available side with
options and a right Chosen side to show the options you have selected. Select the option from
the left Available side, then click the top triangle to move the option to the right Chosen side. If
you need to move an option from Chosen to Available, select the option on the right Chosen
side and use the bottom triangle to move it to the left Available side.
Help Bubbles
Any time you see a yellow circle with a question mark in it next to field, you can hover over it to
get help information for this field.
TAB Overview
School Information
Enter your school information on this page, including address, principal name, and contact
information for ease of reference.
To enter your school information:
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Go to the School Information tab.
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Click the New School Information button to enter your school information. Fields with a red bar
are required.
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Click Save.
To edit your school information:
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Go to the School Information tab.
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Click on the Edit button to the left of your school name.
Edit the information.
Click Save.
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Participant Information
Enter your participant’s name and information (note: only name is required to generate reports)
to help you keep records for attendance, emergency contact, etc. This is very similar to entering
information into a spreadsheet, but here you have a data entry form. (note: you must associate
participants with a session in order for them to show up on the report, see BOKS sessions for
more details)
To enter participant information:
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Go to the Participant Information tab.
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Click the New Participant Information button.
 Enter the information for one participant.
Click Save and New to save this record and enter a new participant; click Save if you just
want to save this record and not enter a new one.
To edit participant information:
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Go to the Participant Information tab.
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Click Edit to the left of the name of the participant whose information you would like to edit.
Edit the information.
Click Save.
BOKS Sessions
Entering in your session information, including times, grades and trainers will help you keep
track of program progress over time.
To enter a new BOKS training session:
 Go to the BOKS Sessions tab.
 Click the New BOKS Session button.
 Enter the information about the BOKS session
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To associate BOKS participants with BOKS session:
Option 1:
 Click the respective BOKS Session button.
 Click New BOKS Session Participant.
 Enter in participant’s name in search field and click
 Click on participant’s name from list.
 Click save and new.
Option 2:
 Go to the Participant Information tab.
 Click the participant’s name
 Scroll to bottom of page and click New BOKS Session Participant.
 Enter in session name in search field and click
 Click on respective session.
 Click Save.
(note: option 2 can be done simultaneously as you are entering in participant’s information.
Just click save after entering information, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click New
BOKS Session Participant.)
To record metrics times:
 Click Edit next to the participant’s name
 Enter in run time as minute.second (i.e. 1 minute, 35 seconds = 1.35)
 Click Save.
To record attendance:
 Click New Attendance.
 Enter in attendance information (note: record total number of children that attended).
 Click Save or Save and New if you have more than one day to record.
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Trainer Reports
This page is home to all the reports that are automatically generated from your participant
information data. Print these reports off to help you manage your class. This information
could be useful in applying for grants.
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The reports that are available include:
Session Participant List: Run this report to generate a list of BOKS session participants.
Session Attendance: Run this report to generate a list of attendance numbers with dates
and notes.
Session Trainer and Volunteer List: Run this report to generate a list with contact
information of the trainers and volunteers involved with a session.
Participant T-Shirt Size: Use this report to generate a list of BOKS participants and their tshirt size.
Participant Allergies and Requirements: Use this report to generate a list of all BOKS
session participants, any allergies listed, and if they require an EpiPen or inhaler
Participant Parent/Emergency Contacts: Generate a report that includes the parent
contact information as well as emergency contact information.
Participants by Teacher: Use this report to group BOKS participants by their teacher,
which can be especially helpful when handing out .the BOKS Session surveys.
Run Time Comparison: This report looks at the different participant run times during the
session, time and percent change, and the average for the group.
To Run a Report:
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Click on the Trainer Reports tab.
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Click the name of the report you would like to run.
Click Run Report.
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To print the report, click Printable View.

To export the report to Excel, click Export Details.
For the Export File Encoding field, keep the default setting (ISO-8859-1)
For the Export File Format field, select Excel Format.
Click Export. This will save the report to your computer.
Training Folders
All documents and videos used to help run a BOKS session by folder.
To view folder contents:
 Click on the Training Folders tab.
 Click Browse to the left of the folder name you would like to open.
 Click on an item name to preview the document.
 To download the document, click the Download button.
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Trainer Content
Another way to view and search for all BOKS related documents and videos. If you aren’t
sure what title document you are looking for, use this tab and its search function to help you
find the right document.
To search for content:

Click on the Training Content tab.
 Use the Search field above the Search Results pane to enter your search keywords. Click
Go.
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Numerous filter options are also available in the left-hand column.
To preview a document, click the document name.
To download the document, select the checkbox to the left of the document name and
click the Download button.
Trainer Forum
The forum allows all members of the trainer hub to communicate with one another and
BOKS HQ, post comments or suggestions, and rank topics, so you are following what is
most important to you.
To submit an idea:

Click the Trainer Forum tab.

Click Post Idea.
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In the Title field, enter a title for your idea.
In the Description, write a short paragraph explaining your idea.
From the Categories picklist, assign the idea to one or more categories.
Click Post.
To vote on an idea:

Click on the Trainer Forum tab.
 Locate an idea you want to promote or demote.
To add ten points to the idea, click promote next to the idea. To subtract 10 points from the
idea, click demote. After you have voted, your Community Nickname appears at the bottom of
the idea’s detail page to track that your vote was made.
To add comments to posted ideas, such as a question, some added insight, or additional ideas:

Click on the Trainer Forum tab.
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Locate an idea on which you want to comment.
Click either the title of the idea or the Comments link below the idea description.
On the detail page for the idea, type your comments into the text entry area in the Add
Your Comment section. You can enter up to 4,000 characters
Click Post to submit your comment.
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BOKS Natick Multiyear Research Study – BKFC Reference #11
Highlights of Study Findings December 2013
National Institute on Out-of-School Time
Wellesley College
Evaluation and research for the study were conducted from September 2011 through June
2013. Data were collected through (a) child-level school assessment data, (b) teacher and
parent surveys, and (c) program data. BOKS students were compared to a nonparticipating
group of peers in similar grades in the Natick school district.
There were 570 total child participants in the study, with 136 enrolled in the BOKS program in
the fall of 2011. Most of the children participating in BOKS were enrolled for both fall and
spring sessions. After graduation attrition and a small number of families leaving the study,
there were 104 returning BOKS students and 254 returning comparison students for the
second school year. New kindergarteners (n = 141) were added to the sample for the fall of
2012.
Nutrition Surveys. 124 BOKS youth completed both a pre- and post-test assessment.
Significant differences in youth pre- and post-test responses were found for more than 35
percent (n = 13; 37.1%) of the thirty-five survey items. Children particularly showed more
knowledgeable at post-test about various nutrition concepts including: the classification of
specific foods by type; awareness of appropriate serving sized; examples of nutritionallydense carbohydrates; and the importance of eating “real” foods.
400-Meter Run. Children who had participated in a full year of BOKS programming during
2011–2012 showed a significant decrease in time completing the 400-meter run. Mean run
time at the beginning of the fall session 2011 was 2.25 minutes compared to the spring 2012
mean running time of 2.15 minutes, t(83) = 2.73, p < .01. Boys also showed a significant
decrease in time between fall 2011 and spring 2012 from 2.25 to 2.08 minutes, t(45) = 3.198,
p < .01. Girls’ mean running time improved from 2.25 minutes to 2.22 minutes, but the
difference was not significant. A similar pattern was evident during Year 2. In both the 2012 fall
and 2013 spring sessions, BOKS children showed a significant decrease in their 400-meter
runs during each session, decreasing running time in the fall by 3 seconds and in the spring
by 4 seconds. Over the course of the two sessions, boys and girls both decreased their time
by 3 seconds. Kindergarteners in the Year 2 sample showed the most improvement,
decreasing running time by 5 seconds.
Physical Activity Logs. Analysis of data from children who completed both the November
and May logs, and who had participated in BOKS for either session, showed that BOKS
children’s mean number of minutes in physical activity increased more than comparison
group children. This was true in Year 1 and Year 2 for all subcategories of BOKS children
examined—overall BOKS group, BOKS girls, BOKS boys, and BOKS kindergarteners.
BOKS 2012 kindergarteners who participated in one or two sessions of BOKS showed the
highest mean change in physical activity minutes from fall to spring (41 minutes) as
compared to non-BOKS kindergarteners (28 minutes).
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BRIEF Scales. Analysis of working memory skills in Year 1 showed that BOKS kindergartners
(full-year participants) were significantly improved (p ≤ .05) on working-memory skills, as rated
by teachers, compared to their non-BOKS peers. BOKS parents rated these same children
significantly more improved on working memory than parents of non-BOKS children (p ≤ .05)
during Year 2. New kindergarteners in Year 2 did not show significant differences in teacher or
parent ratings on working memory. In Year 2, BOKS second graders were rated significantly (p
≤ .05) more improved in shift skills by teachers as compared to their non-BOKS peers. Mean
change for BOKS second graders is also greater than their non-BOKS peers for parent ratings
of shift and working memory and teacher rating of working memory, although these differences
are not significant. Mean change in working memory and shift over the two-year period for
youth participating in BOKS for all four sessions was not significantly different from children
never participating in BOKS.
AIMSweb. Year 1 analysis of ELA AIMSweb raw score change from November to May
showed BOKS kindergarteners improved significantly more than comparison kindergarteners
(p ≤ .05). This pattern continued in Year 2 with BOKS youth showing more improvement on
ELA (p ≤ .07) than their peers. Findings for math for all grades were insignificant.
MCAS. Results on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) for ELA
and math were collected on a small group (n = 44) of fourth-grade (2012–2013) BOKS
participants. MCAS is a growth measure and provides achievement level comparison of a
student against like cohorts of children. Tests change in complexity each year and become
more rigorous, so yearly comparison is not necessarily linear. Generally, when compared
with their cohort, BOKS children show stronger growth towards advanced/proficient status in
ELA but less growth compared to their cohort in math.
Parent Perception. Researchers surveyed parents on their perceptions of their child’s health
during the school year. Specifically, parents were asked how they compared their child’s
health from one year earlier. BOKS parents with children attending one or more sessions
were significantly more likely than comparison group parents to rate their child’s health as
better than the year before in both Year 1 and Year 2.
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BOKS Kids Fitness Certificate Developed in Cooperation with

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