Engaging youth in traditional physical education exercises or ball sports can be a challenging task, especially when they prefer novelty, entertainment, or excitement in their leisure-time activities. In addition, many youth are unaware of the opportunities that exist to exercise or recreate in nature, often preferring to spend time indoors…

Research has shown that regular physical activity helps to prevent major health problems, such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. However, little research has been conducted on classroom-based physical activity programs for students with disabilities. In North Carolina, the Healthy Active Children Policy was implemented in 2006, requiring…

Pedometers are a popular tool among physical educators and recreation and fitness professionals for promoting and monitoring the physical activity of youths. Pedometers are particularly useful because they are reliable, inexpensive, and simple for youths to use and understand. However, pedometers also have some limitations, the greatest one being…

The last several decades have witnessed a large increase in the number of girls who participate in sports in the United States. Today an estimated 8 million third- through 12th-grade girls and 12 million boys participate in organized and team sports. While much progress has been made toward achieving gender equity in youth sports, too many girls…

The universal design for learning (UDL) approach to teaching, a method to create access for all students, can be extremely effective when adequate time, energy, and creativity are spent to apply it. The purpose of this article is to encourage the use of the universal design for learning approach to ensure the successful inclusion of all students…

This article provides an overview of medicine ball training. Specifically, it describes "Medicine Ball for All," a physical activity program designed to provide children and teenagers with a meaningful learning experience that is consistent with their developmental needs. The article focuses on developing a safe, successful, and inexpensive…

This article looks at the role of K-12 physical educators in helping students to accomplish the NETS-S standards. There are six categories of NETS-S comprising 14 standards. In addition, there are 10 performance indicators for PreK-2, 10 performance indicators for grades three to five, 10 performance indicators for grades six to eight, and 10…

This article applies the principles and concepts of the aesthetics of movement to actual physical education teaching situations. It does so by discussing the author's one-day observations of several middle school physical education classes taught by three different teachers. During these classes, the teachers taught students how to calculate and…

Physical educators can play a significant role in promoting active lifestyles and lifelong fitness. Unfortunately, many physical education programs face the challenges of time limitations, affordability, and professional commitment. The purpose of this article is to describe a stretch-band fitness program offered to sixth-grade students. The…