Jurongville Secondary School

ENHANCING ELEMENTS OF FUN THROUGH A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE PROGRAMME: JURONGVILLE SECONDARY SCHOOL’S PERSPECTIVE

Group Photo after a Kinball Session

The Spark Behind the Programme (2019)

Recently in 2017, a study conducted by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) found that 7 in 10 children who are overweight at seven years of age will remain overweight well into their adult years(The Straits Times, 2017). This will create a major health pandemic in Singapore as the rate of obesity among youths is also increasing due to poor dietary habit, lack of physical activities and a sedentary lifestyle.

Singaporeans and obesity

Our Hypothesis:

Reference to Research Paper

Title of Study: Exercise Experience and Changes in Affective Attitude (Sudeck, Schmidt & Conzelmann, 2016)
Purpose	To examine the relationship between exercise experiences and changes in affective attitude.
Methods	Programme sessions were held once a week during a 13-weeks intervention period. Each session lasted 60 minutes. Physical exercises with a predominantly moderate to strenuous intensity were carried out and the exercises were guided and carried out in groups. Affective states were measured immediately before the exercise session and twice during the session itself.
Key Findings	Exercise experiences and the connected physical fitness are associated with affective and motivational processes. There was a positive correlation between participants’ affective state during exercise and their perception of competency of engaging in the physical task.  Participants who perceive themselves as having lower level of fitness as indicated in the questionnaire have negative experiences during the exercise sessions conducted.  For participants with lower level of fitness, they experienced higher level of positivity during and after the exercise when the intensity of the exercise is suitable to their fitness level.

Jurongville Pedagogical Approach to Healthy Lifestyle Program

JVS Fitness First programme was designed based on the Singapore Teaching Practice framework, and begins by taking into consideration the learners’ profile, namely our Sec 1 Obese Students (STP, 2017). We stressed the importance of fostering a Positive Classroom Climate and so we designed a programme where the obese students will participate in physical activities at their own ability level together with the Sports Leader. The programme was carried out from 17th July 2019 to 21st August 2019, a total of 6 weekly sessions. 

The two main objectives of this programme are to:

Objectives of Programme

Main Role of Teachers

1. To guide the Sports Leader, mentoring of their Sec 1 buddies (obese students) and following up the sports leaders on a weekly basis.
2. To provide weekly progress report on JVS step challenge through updates on:

• The best performing groups that clock the most steps
• The groups that did not manage to hit their target (Follow-up)

JVS Step Tracker Challenge 

As part of our collaboration with Health Promotion Board (HPB) where the school engaged their instructors to conduct our weekly sessions. HPB provided complimentary step trackers for our programme and also provided weekly progress report based on the results which the teachers used for debriefing after each session. 

Objectives and Processes

• To encourage all participants to aim to walk at least 5000 steps daily. 
• Each participants’ steps will contribute to the team accumulating “Health-Points”, earning the opportunity to participate in a weekly “Spin to Win” challenge based on the different tier of steps they have clocked together as a group. 
• With the aid of the step tracker, visually they can see on how physically active they are daily and they are kept accountable for the amount of physical activity they are required to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

   

Weekly Spin the Wheel Challenge

Health Points Reward System (Individual Outcome)

Tier Level	Step count (Daily)	Health Points
Tier 1	5000-7000	10
Tier 2	7001- 10000	25
Tier 3	>10000	50

Spin the Wheel (Group Outcome)

Group Outcome (Weekly)	No of Spins
Whole group to attain Tier 1 at least 5 days in a week	1
Whole group to attain Tier 2 at least 5 days in a week	2
Whole group to attain Tier 3 at least 5 days in a week	3

Rules for Qualifying for Weekly Spin:

1. All 3 students in the same team (1 x Sec 2 Sports Leader, 2 x Sec 1 participants) must at least attain the same tier or higher on a daily basis.
   Example: Student A attains Tier 3, but student B and student C attain only tier 1. Whole team eligible to redeem only Tier 1 Health-Points. 
2. All students qualifying for the spin must show the amount of steps they walked throughout the week on the HEALTHY 365 app to the teachers during the weekly session.

Peer Mentoring System 

Objectives

The main objectives of this programme for the Sec 2 Sports Leader are as follows:

1. Empower our Sports Leader to be advocates of healthy living,
2. Develop their facilitation and leadership skills to prepare them for the organisation of future sporting events.

There is no prior training conducted for our Sports Leaders. This was the first programme that they were involved in after they were nominated. 

The 3 “P”s of Leadership Training for Sports Leader

Philosophy	Process	Product
Being intentional and setting time aside to debrief our Sports Leader helps them to learn from the experience.	Creating opportunities for Sports Leader to develop their leadership skills and to “learn on the job”	Through the debriefing process, Sports Leader are able to reflect and process their experience, and thus, have a more meaningful learning experience.
Creating meaningful leadership experiences is important in the leadership development of our Sports Leader.	Weekly debrief session conducted by the teachers to provide feedback on their facilitation skills and management of the group.	Sports Leader role-model the qualities and values of being a good leader for their peers by putting what they have learned into practice.
	Teachers intentionally use teachable moments during the session to highlight certain values and qualities of being a Sport Leader.

Roles and Responsibility of Sports Leader

• Mentoring their Sec 1 mentees by advocating a healthy lifestyle through participating in the weekly sports session. 
• Monitoring the group activity level through the step trackers and providing weekly update to the teachers. 
• A weekly team talk at the end of each session during which the Sports Leader will have the opportunity to sit down with their group members to provide updates on the team progress and discuss strategies on how they can work together to achieve more “health-points”. 
• They lead by example by initiating healthy physical activities with their Secondary 1 mentees outside of curriculum hours and encourage them to take ownership of their own health and fitness in a motivating social context.

Brief Programme Outline

Session	Programme
1	Intro to Programme: Ice-breakers facilitated by Sports Leader Objectives of Programme Step-challenge (Assignment of Mentee System) Motivational sharing by Mr Razif * Issuing and setup of Step Tracker *Mr Razif, who was the school AED struggled with weight issues since childhood. Because of his unhealthy eating habits, he was severely obese by the time he was in secondary school. After having his first baby, he was determined to make a lifestyle change for his family to be healthy by cutting down on all the junk food and embarking on a strict exercise regime. He lost more than 40 kg after all his hard work and dedication put into changing his lifestyle.
2	JVS Step Challenge Week 1 + Powerball Session
3	JVS Step Challenge Week 2 + Dodgeball Session
4	JVS Step Challenge Week 3 + Kinball Session
5	JVS Step Challenge Week 4 + Treasure Defence Session
6	Captain’s ball + Finale Finale Healthy Meal Sharing by Obese students  Sharing by Sports Leader Post-program survey and feedback

Beautiful Memories from Our Programme

Beautiful memories

Key Outcomes: Post-Programme Survey

Post-survey results

Participants’ Sharing (Finale)

Participants’ Sharing	Excerpts from Sharing
Darwisyah (Sec 1 Obese Student)	“My experience in the fitness programme was great. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of nice people. I felt more motivated to exercise together with my friends as the sessions were fun and enjoyable. I love interacting with my Sports Leader as they continue to motivate me.  This programme has taught me to take control of my own fitness by making the right choices to exercise and eat healthily” – Darwisyah
Sophia (Sec 2 Sports Leader)	“There were many different things I learnt from the programme. Firstly, I would say that I am not a confident person initially. However, this programme has helped me develop my confidence and leadership skills by voicing my opinions and interacting with different people.” During this experience, I managed to motivate my buddy successfully through inspirational words like “You can do it” and exercising with them after school.” – Sophia

Participants’ Sharing

Moving Forward in 2021 (K.I.S.S)

KEEP	IMPROVE	START	STOP
Continue to equip our future participants with step trackers to allow them to monitor their activity level through engaging in physical activities.	Empowering our Sports Leaders to play an even larger role in the planning process.	Involve a larger cohort of our student body by engaging the Sports Leader to plan more after-school sporting activities, for example interclass volleyball tournament.	To consider removing activities which were not as engaging according to participants’ feedback and replacing it with  activities that participants enjoy.
Continue to engage the Sports Leaders to support the programme as health advocates so that they can role-model and inspire their peers to live a healthy lifestyle.	Increasing the duration  of the programme so that participants will develop a more sustainable lifestyle over a longer period of time.	Develop a more holistic approach to our healthy lifestyle programme by expanding the scope of our sessions to include other aspects of health, for example, food and nutrition.

Contact Us

Please feel free to contact Adriel Chia or Dr Shah if you are interested to know more about this programme. 

We can be reached at: 

• Chia_wei_xian_adriel@schools.gov.sg 

• Mohammad_shah_razak@schools.gov.sg

References