Evaluation Report of Prairie View School Wednesday Morning In-Motion Program

Prepared for Prairie View School Administration and In-Motion Committee Prepared by Chris Mason Master of Education Technology Student Boise State University

Table of Contents
Content Summary Program Description Program Objectives Program Components Evaluation Method Participants Procedures Data Sources Results Discussion Project Cost Appendix Page 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 6 7 8

Summary The In-Motion program at Prairie View School is a program where students are encouraged to participate in physical activities. The In-Motion committee is made up of a group of teachers and students who organize physical activities. They provide students with the opportunity to try new activities. They also try to ensure that the activities provided are available to all students. These physical activities are offered during school hours and before school hours. This year, the In-Motion committee set the following goal: The In-Motion committee will increase the number of students who participate in In-Motion activities on Wednesday morning. A goal based method of evaluation was used for this project. The purpose of this evaluation is to help the In-Motion committee increase the number of students who participate during In-Motion activities on Wednesday mornings. The evaluation observed the students who attended the Wednesday morning In-Motion activities. It also surveyed the students as to the activities that they would like to see offered on Wednesday mornings. The evaluation will help the committee discover: who is participating in the In-Motion program who is not participating during In-Motion activities what activities have the highest attendance rate what activities the students would like to see offered as In-Motion activities

This evaluation will help the In-Motion committee make decisions as to what activities they can offer to encourage more students to participate on Wednesday mornings. It will help the committee decide what activities they may not want to offer any longer. They will also be able to determine what the demographics are of the students who attend Wednesday mornings and what changes they need to make to include more students. The evaluation will be comprised of the following components: attendance records of Wednesday morning In-Motion activities survey of students who participate in Wednesday morning In-Motion activities survey of the student population regarding which In-Motion activities to offer on Wednesday mornings

The Wednesday morning In-Motion program at Prairie View School is a program that attracts a significant population of students who have the ability to attend. There are still many students who are not attending the activities. The program needs to continue to offer new activities on Wednesday mornings. There are many activities that the In-Motion committee can offer that may increase attendance. The program also needs to reach out to the male students at the school. Many of the male students at the school did not attend the program. The program also needs to work towards including more grade 1, 2, and Kindergarten students. Overall, the program does

attract many students. However, these suggestions will increase the number of students who participate during Wednesday morning In-Motion activities. Program Description Prairie View School is an elementary school in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, Canada. The student population is 270 students. The majority of the students who attend Prairie View School are students who live in town. The rest of the students live outside of town and are bused into the school There are 170 students who live in the town of Dalmeny. 100 students are bused into the school each day. The In-Motion program is used by all of the students at Prairie View School. All of the students are encouraged to participate in the In-Motion activities. There are activities in which all students have the opportunity to participate in. Recess activities, assembly activities, and special event activities (Terry Fox Run, Marafun, Boogie Run, and Intramurals) are available for all students. Wednesday morning In-Motion activities are also available for all students. However, many students are not able to attend because of where they live. Bus students do not arrive at the school until at least 8:30 am. Program Objectives The objectives of the In-Motion program were created in 2008. They were created by a group of grade six students and teachers. The program was created in order to curb the inactivity level observed by the staff of Prairie View School and the increasing awareness of student obesity in society. The programs mission is Enjoy activity for fun, for life. There vision is All students at Prairie View School live physically active lives . The objectives for the program include: Prairie View School will facilitate physical activities for all students to participate in. Students and staff will collaborate to provide engaging physical activities. In-Motion activities will ensure that all students have the right to participate. Activities offered by the In-Motion committee will be inclusive to all students, staff, and school community members. Reasonable funding will be available to ensure that In-Motion activities are provided and available for all students to participate in.

Program Components The In-Motion committee consists of students and teachers at Prairie View School. The teachers volunteer their time to the committee. The staff that volunteers to run the committee has been in place since 2008. The teachers who are on this committee have been there since the inception of the program. The students who are on the committee are chosen each year from a pool of candidates. The student candidates volunteer to be a part of the committee. The students are chosen by the teachers. The students must write a brief application to the committee and explain why they want to be on the In-Motion committee and how they think that they can benefit the committee. Only grade six students (the senior students at Prairie View School) are able to be on the In-Motion committee.

The In-Motion committee provides the students at Prairie View School with many opportunities to be active. They organize and lead all of the activities. Each Wednesday morning the InMotion committee provides an activity. All students at Prairie View School are invited to attend the activities on Wednesday morning. The activities are adapted, if necessary, to include all students. There are many students whose disabilities require the committee to adapt the activities. The committee invites a guest to facilitate the activity. They are experts at the activity that they lead. They provide their expertise and knowledge on a voluntary basis. The committee tries to provide a variety of activities for the students to participate in. There are many activities that are offered for the students. The before school activities include: karate zumba co-operative games running scavenger hunt walking beach volleyball basketball Tae Kwon Do folk dancing square dancing gymnastics

The committee also provides In-Motion breaks during our assemblies and during recess. The activities that are organized during assemblies and recess are facilitated and created by students with teacher guidance. The In-Motion committee meets weekly. During their meetings the teachers guide the students as they create activities for recesses and assemblies. The activities include a variety of team sports, individual activities, relays, and group activities. The committee also organizes special events at the school level. Some of the special activities include the Terry Fox Run, Boogie Run, and Marafun. The school is able to provide all the necessary materials for the In-Motion activities. On occasion, the guest facilitators need to bring in their own supplies and materials. The school also provides an honorarium at the end of the year to all guest facilitators. The honorarium is usually provided in the way of a gift card in appreciation for their expertise and service to the school. Evaluation Method Participants The students at Prairie View School participated in the evaluation. The students range in age from 5 years old to twelve years old. The boys and the girls at the school participated. All students at the school participated in the survey. The classroom teachers facilitated the survey. Any students who were absent during the survey completed it at an alternate time. The surveys were collected by the evaluator and were tallied. The evaluator also observed the attendance of each In-Motion activity. When the students arrived they answered the questions on the Attendance Observation sheet (Appendix 1). Procedures The students completed a brief questionnaire upon their arrival to the Wednesday morning InMotion activity during the months of September and October. The questionnaire took less than a minute to complete. The questionnaire was conducted by the evaluator. The surveys were administered during class time at Prairie View School. Each teacher handed out the survey. The

teacher reviewed the survey with the students at each grade level. The students in grades 3-6 completed the survey by themselves. In grades Kindergarten to grade 2 the students were guided through the survey. The teacher read the activities and the students checked off the activities they wanted to participate in. The Kindergarten to grade two students brainstormed activities other than the ones that were listed on the survey. Data Source The data that was collected was new information. There had never been a collection of data to see what students were attending Wednesday morning In-Motion activities and what the attendance rates were for those activities. The data that was collected was qualitative in nature. The students answered three questions when they attended the In-Motion activities on Wednesday morning. Only the students who attended the In-Motion activity answered the questionnaire. Then a survey was conducted of all the students in the school. The survey asked the students what In-Motion activities they would attend on Wednesday morning from a list and then it asked them what additional activities they would like to see offered. Results The number of the students who attended the In-Motion activities at Prairie View School were tracked. There were eight In-Motion dates during a two month period. The activities that were offered included: Zumba (twice) Karate Basketball Scavenger Hunt Co-operative Games Walk Volleyball Here were the results from the attendance that was taken during each activity:

There were a total of 295 students who attended the In-Motion activities. The scavenger hunt and zumba were the activities that drew the highest attendance. The grade level which had the

highest attendance level was tracked. The highest attendance of boys and girls and bus students and town students was also tracked. Here were the results:

The survey of the activities that students would like to see offered shared some clear ideas for the In-Motion committee. The survey was provided to all students. All students completed the survey. The survey allowed the students to offer their opinion of what other activities they would like to see offered during Wednesday morning In-Motion. Many of the suggestions were cooperative games. Some of those suggestion included: skin the snake through the hoop Doctor dodge ball Junk ball Over under Parachute Capture the flag Four corners

The survey found that the following activities are activities that students would like to see offered on Wednesday mornings:

Activity tag games dodge ball scavenger hunt co-operative games soccer floor hockey skating gymnastics video dance game volleyball Discussion

Student Choice 238 222 216 214 186 173 167 162 161 151

Activity kickball cycling karate tae kwon do basketball football track and field zumba softball hiking

Student Choice 144 137 121 118 116 113 108 108 105 89

Activity bocce ball running lacrosse archery folk dancing square dancing golf

Student Choice 81 77 55 49 46 43 39

The purpose of this evaluation is to help the In-Motion committee increase the number of students who participate during In-Motion activities on Wednesday mornings. This was accomplished by tracking who attended the In-Motion activities, which activities were had a high attendance, and what activities the students would like to see offered. The students in grade three, four, and five had the highest attendance for the In-Motion activities. Girls had a higher attendance record than the boys. Students who lived in town attended more often than bus students. The students chose tag games, dodge ball, scavenger hunt, co-operative games, soccer, and floor hockey as the five most popular sports on the survey. The complete list of student votes is listed above. This is important information for the In-Motion committee. It is apparent that the committee needs to try and attract the students in grades Kindergarten, one, two, and six. They had the lowest attendance of all the grades. It would be beneficial to complete a more in-depth survey of those grades. They may want to send a survey home for the students and parents to fill out together. This may generate more information as to how to draw these students out to the activities. The committee also needs to find a way to draw out more of the boys in the school to Wednesday morning activities. The boys did not attend the activities as often as the girls. Town students had a higher attendance record than bus students. It is evident that some activities are more popular than others. Tag games, dodge ball, soccer, floor hockey, and skating are just a few of the activities that had a high rate of votes that were not offered so far this year. The In-Motion committee needs to focus on attracting grades Kindergarten, one, and two. These grades, in particular Kindergarten, had low attendance records. Offering In-Motion mornings for younger students and for older students may attract more students of all grade levels. They also

need to plan certain activities for particular age groups. A more specific survey that identifies which grade level chose which activities will assist the committee. The attendance of the bus students was low. The committee may need to offer activities during noon hour or recess for those students. They may also want to survey the parents of bus students to see if an after school activity would help to attract their child. The In-Motion Committee has some authentic, valuable data in which it can make some important decisions. The evaluation has provided data on who attends Wednesday morning InMotion activities, who does not attend, what activities draws the most students, and what activities students would be most likely to attend. The data suggests that the In-Motion committee has some work to do when it comes to attracting younger students at the school, in particular the grade one, two, and Kindergarten students. They had the lowest attendance level of all the grades. The In-Motion committee should complete a more in-depth review of these grade levels. They should survey and interview the students in these grade levels. The attendance level of the boys was nearly half of the girls during Wednesday morning, and the town students had over ten times the attendance rate of bus students. The In-Motion committee needs to find activities that will attract the boys at Prairie View School. A survey of the boys at the school would reveal what activities would increase their attendance. The committee should investigate alternate ways to accommodate the students who ride the bus. The In-Motion committee also knows which activities are the most popular choices among the student population at Prairie View School. There were many activities suggested in the survey that have not been offered this year. Those activities would attracted many other students according to the survey. Tag and dodge ball have not been offered and they were the choice of more students than the highest attended activities, co-operative games and zumba, which have already been offered. The In-Motion committee has many options of activities to offer on Wednesday morning to increase student attendance. Project Cost Evaluation Date Evaluator Client September 1, 2012 October 31, 2012 Chris Mason of Chris Mason Inc. Prairie View School In-Motion Committee

Fee for services rendered: Services Preplanning and preparation (survey creation, meetings to understand the history of the program, etc): 10 hours x $60.00/hour Wednesday Morning Observations of InMotion Activities: 16 hours x $60.00 Data collection and analysis (surveys and observations): 20 hours x $60.00

Cost $600.00

$960.00 $1200.00

Written Evaluation Report: 20 hours x $60.00 Communication of Report to Stakeholders: 4 hours x $60.00 Miscellaneous Expenses (photocopying, mileage, meals, materials, etc)
Total

$1200.00 $240.00 $1000.00

$5200.00

The evaluator met with the In-Motion committee to gain a strong background knowledge of the In-Motion program at Prairie View School. The evaluator then prepared the necessary tools to evaluate the program. The evaluator was present at the school each Wednesday morning to observe and record the students who attended. Then the survey was conducted and the data was analyzed by the evaluator. A report was written and presented to the In-Motion Committee. Appendix 1

Attendance Questionnaire Grade _________________________ Circle the answer that describes the student: Are you a Boy Girl Are you a bus student
Appendix 2

Yes

No

In-Motion Student Survey

Please check off the In-Motion activities that you would attend: o gymnastics o karate o scavenger hunt o hiking o folk dancing o square dancing o video dance game o kickball o golf o Bocce ball o basketball o floor hockey o skating o soccer o football o softball o archery o dodge ball o zumba o co-operative games o running o volleyball o tae kwon do o lacrosse o cycling o tag games o track and field

Please list any other sports that you would like to see offered as In-Motion activities: