KEY INFORMATION

Recommended age group: 11–14.
Time required: approx. 60 minutes.
Equipment: student-facing presentation; red, amber and green indicators (cones or signs); printable activity sheets from the presentation: ‘rucksack’ of climbing aids, route planner, pledge sheet.


ACTIVITY IDEA

Warm up

  • Using coloured cones or signs, set up a red-amber-green spectrum across/around the space.
  • Ask the students to stand behind the line, randomly to begin.
  • Explain the spectrum: red = never, amber = sometimes, green = always.
  • Read out each statement on the slides and ask the students to move to a place on the spectrum that reflects their personal response to each statement.
  • Encourage the students to share their reasons for their choices with their neighbours and/or take brief feedback from the students for each round for why they are that colour. (Make sure it is fun, not judgemental!)

Explore

  • Ask the students to watch the video and consider what helps or hinders the characters in adopting healthy activity habits.
  • Working in pairs, ask the students to identify young people’s barriers to healthy activity habits; ask them to log each barrier on a sticky-note; these are ‘bricks’ in the wall.
  • Ask the students to stick their notes to a ‘wall’ in the room to create a wall of ‘bricks’.
  • Alternative: ask students to draw ‘bricks’ direct on to wallpaper lining paper.

Challenge

  • Share the climbing analogy with the students: what helps us to tackle a wall when climbing?
  • Display the ‘rucksack’ to students and take examples to discuss how these ‘climbing aids’ might help a young person build healthy habits.
  • Working in small groups, ask each group to imagine a realistic scenario in which a young person faces a barrier to having healthy activity habits; or use the example provided/ give groups a scenario to work on.
  • By choosing aids from the ‘rucksack’, ask the groups to show how they will help that person to overcome the barrier; ask them to present findings to another group or the whole group.

Cool down

  • Ask the students to create a pledge to start/maintain healthy activity habits.
  • Use the slide to introduce SMART goal-setting; issue each student with a route planner; working individually, ask students to set three SMART goals as a way to reach their pledge. Optional: ask students to pair and share to offer feedback to each other as climbing buddies.
  • Use the key learnings slide to summarise and reinforce the key messages about building healthy habits.

MAKE IT ACTIVE

Ideas for active learning are included throughout the resource. Adapt as required to suit your class and learning environment.