Fitness for Life Canada: Preparing Teens for Healthy, Active Lifestyles

Fitness for Life Canada: Preparing Teens for Active and Healthy Living is the only health and fitness education program backed by research and focused on shifting teens from dependence to independence when it comes to lifelong healthy lifestyles. Through Fitness for Life Canada, students are engaged in the process of personal program planning for a variety of health behaviours including physical activity, fitness, and health eating. This evidence-based and standards-based program follows a pedagogically sound scope and sequence to enhance student learning and progress and presents the science of healthy living at age-appropriate levels.
Research clearly demonstrates that active and healthy adults use a variety of self-management skills to maintain their positive behaviours. Fitness for Life Canada helps students develop numerous self-management skills—such as self-assessment, self-monitoring, goal setting, finding social support, overcoming barriers, and managing time—to prepare them to independently engage in healthy lifestyles. Students also learn to engage in community physical activity opportunities, with national sport and health organizations, and with technology that supports healthy lifestyles.
Through Fitness for Life Canada, students explore these aspects:
• The foundations of active and healthy living, including adopting healthy lifestyles and self-management skills and setting goals and planning personal programs
• Learning the basics for lifelong activity and health, including engaging in smart and safe physical activity, knowing how much activity is enough, and understanding healthy eating
• Beginning activity and building fitness, including participating in moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity and developing cardiorespiratory endurance
• Building muscle fitness and flexibility, including understanding muscle fitness applications and ergogenic aids
• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including achieving a healthy body composition, choosing nutritious foods, and making good consumer choices
• Creating positive and healthy experiences, including managing stress, developing lifelong leadership skills, understanding reproductive and sexual wellness, and making wise choices regarding alcohol, drugs, and tobacco
Fitness for Life Canada has extensive teacher resources with more than 100 lesson plans (classroom and activity based) that provide teachers with numerous options for student assessment and opportunities to demonstrate evidence of student learning (e.g., quizzes, tests, worksheets, student demonstrations, student projects). Teachers can integrate the program with existing curricula or deliver it as a stand-alone program. They can also apply our Fitness Club approach to deliver fitness education to large numbers of students using multiple activity areas.
Special Features in Chapters and Units
Every chapter in the student text features two classroom lessons, one feature that engages students with prominent Canadian sport organizations and health organizations, and a chapter review. The book devotes multiple lessons to personal program planning, implementation, and evaluation. Go to Sample Content to view sample page layouts that show thhese special features.
Each unit offers a Consumer Corner feature. The teacher web resources feature the same chapter content as the student text plus three physical activity lessons per chapter that help students apply what they’ve learned from the classroom lessons.
In addition, the chapters have a series of other prominent features:
• Lesson objectives direct student learning.
• Lesson vocabulary helps students understand multiple uses of words (definitions in glossary and online).
• Art includes a version of the physical activity pyramid for teens.
• Photos and design give the chapters a refreshing student-friendly look with its dynamic four-color design.
• Muscle art identifies the muscles used in each exercise.
• Fit Facts give quick information about relevant topics.
• Quotes from famous people reveal their thoughts on fitness, health, and wellness.
• Fitness Technology offers opportunities for students to use and study technology.
• Science in Action provides in-depth coverage of innovations in fitness, health, and wellness.
• Self-Assessment allows students to evaluate their fitness, health, and wellness as the first step in personal planning for improvement.
• Taking Charge and Self-Management allow students to learn self-management skills for adopting healthy behaviors and interacting with other students to solve problems encountered by hypothetical teens.
• Taking Action features activities that are supported by the lesson plans.
• Consumer Corner helps students become good consumers of information on fitness, health, and wellness as they learn how to separate fact from fiction.
Web-Based Resources
Fitness for Life Canada provides physical educators with numerous delivery and assessment options in health and physical education. Specifically, the program has more than 100 detailed activity- and classroom-based lesson plans that can be delivered out of the box for beginner teachers and are modifiable for experienced teachers. The lesson plans are supported with worksheets, activity cards, PowerPoint slides, quizzes, chapter and unit tests, an online test bank, supplemental project ideas, and an online student web resource.
Fitness for Life Canada creates new assessment approaches for teachers that allow students to demonstrate evidence of learning. These include quizzes, tests, portfolios (including digital), demonstrations (live, video, and pictures), journals and reflections (written and video), class presentations, and video presentations.
For students, web resources include the following:
• Video clips that demonstrate the self-assessments in each chapter
• Video clips that demonstrate the exercise in selected chapters
• Worksheets without answers
• Review questions from the text presented in an interactive format so students can check their level of understanding
• Expanded discussions of topics marked by web icons in the text
• Vocabulary terms with definitions
Teacher web resources include the following:
• An introduction that describes the body of knowledge and pedagogical foundations behind Fitness for Life Canada as well as the evidence supporting its effectiveness
• Daily lesson plans, including five lessons per chapter: two classroom plans and three activity plans
• Worksheets with answers
• Premade chapter and unit quizzes with answers
• Activity cards and task cards
• Presentation package of slides with the key points for each lesson
• A test bank that teachers can use to make their own quizzes if they prefer
Fitness for Life Canada develops higher-order physical literacy knowledge and skills that help students become active and healthy adults. Fitness for Life Canada focuses on developing students’ knowledge of health and health-related fitness concepts, training principles, and personal physical activity and fitness program planning. That knowledge is combined with numerous self-management skills that are critical for maintaining physical activity, healthy eating, and general health behaviours. In short, Fitness for Life Canada enhances engagement, learning, and assessment while paving the way to a healthy lifestyle throughout the life span.