That was until the other morning, when I decided to park my car on the other side of the school campus due to attending an event in the evening at that side of the school and wanting to leave directly from there.   The walk across the school took around 10 minutes and according to my phone accounted for around 850 steps, most of which being uphill.    Then it hit me, here was an easy solution at least to make some progress towards improved fitness;  to park at the other side of school every morning and walk across the campus.    This would amount to regular exercise without have much of a significant impact on my working day.   Yes I would need to get up slightly earlier however it would also give me the opportunity to network with colleagues who I suspect would be around campus in the mornings, as well as allowing me to take in the lovely grounds of the school.    I would be getting exercise, appreciating the surroundings and also improving my overall visibility and presence on site.

So there we have it; a little thing in parking across school, which could make a big difference.    I suppose, if I am being honest, this is easy enough now however the challenge will be whether I can keep it up when the winter weather returns!

My posting today will focus loosely on assessment as a result of the below message which appeared on my phone this morning:

So although I may be doing ok at #29daysofwriting my phone is unimpressed at my fitness levels.   I have never been a particularly fit person and recently I have noted how much I struggle in terms of the health and fitness aspect of my life.     As such this was something I was trying to build upon and up until this morning I felt I was making some progress, then my phone provided me with this assessment of my performance.

I liken this message to the large and often standardized tests which we provide students.   I would suggest that students may end up feeling as I did today;  dejected, de-motivated, disappointed and disengaged to name but a few words beginning with “de” or “dis”.

Prior to receiving this message I thought I have been making progress as daily I was seeing an upward trend in the amount of exercise I was doing.     My measurement of exercise being steps taken as recorded by my phone.    I had also built up a bit of understanding as to how my exercise developed over the week, noting that my worst performance was at the beginning and end of the week, peeking with my best performance in the middle of the week.

This brought the realization that maybe I would have to focus on the start and end of the week with focused activities to improve my performance, whereas in the middle of the week when things were going ok, it might equally be ok to continue as currently.

Again looking at students this daily or regular feedback might be akin to assessment for learning with assessment data provided frequently and students required to use the data to drive improvement.   At least in me, this regular data did not dishearten or de-motivate, I as attempted to improve.

This makes me things that it is important to consider the frequency of testing and assessment, plus how we frame feedback.   I will admit that this isn’t anything new.

The issue here though is how I can get back to exercising following the de-motivational impact of my phones message.   The good thing is I consider myself to be quite resilient although I will leave that discussion for a later posting.