Our physical education teacher was able to get about 25 pedometers donated to our school as part of a data-gathering exercise challenge. He has handed off the pedometers to us teachers, asking that we record how many steps we take for each day, over four days, while in school. Later, the sixth graders in math will use the data in Excel spreadsheets to talk about mean, median and mode, I think.
So, of course, this new pedometer strapped on my belt provided a nice morning activity.
First, I asked the kids about the word “pedometer” and we broke the word down into its parts (root and suffix) and began making new words from “ped” and “-meter”, which dovetails nicely with our work in Language Arts this week around the Origins of Words.
Then, I asked my students to estimate how many steps I would take before the end of the school day. I did give them a hint, as I had already been wearing the device for 30 minutes before they arrived. Some, not all, used that information to think about the hours of the school day and base their number on that information.
We wrote all of the estimates down and in the afternoon, I announced my step count — roughly 4,000 steps — and we all cheered the winner. A lot of students asked when they can get a pedometer (that’s is phase two, I think). I’ll be putting the pedometer on again today as I teach.
According to some websites that I found, approximately 2,000 steps equals a mile. That all depends on your foot size and your stride, but I am about a size 12 and I think I have a normal stride.
So that means that during the course of my school day, I amble about the classroom and hallways (mostly the classroom) for about two miles per day. Interesting …
How far do you walk?
Peace (on the peds),
Kevin
Let me tell you folks, when this guy is in the halls – he’s really moving!
I missed day one by getting the pedometer too late so I’ill do the data collecting next week for 4 days.