Saturday, November 12, 2016

Walking University

First of all, thanks to all of the family members who pitched in and joined us on the Family Fitness Challenge.  It was a great way to kick-start Patrick's walking progress and really helped to motivate him. 

Things have kind of fizzled out with that though, and he is wanting to get himself going again.  After discussing our family goals for the year and the progress we each have made, we decided that maybe Pat needs a more formalized plan. 

We decided to create our own walking plan called Walking University and style it after one of my online classes.  The first thing that we did was to pick a reward and set a time-frame for how long the project is going to run.  We decided that because we are a family that strives for excellence, the best reward would come from getting an A+. 


1.     An A+ is 97-100% and is worth $100. 
2.     An A is 93-96% and is worth $50.00. 
3.     An A- is 90-92% and is worth $30.00. 
4.     A B is 80%-89% and is worth $20.00. 
5.     C and below will not receive any reward. 
Rather than randomly assigning a grade to each day (tried this in the past and it just doesn't work), the grades are based on a points system. 



-        Plan for Success – 25 points
-        Daily homework – 5 points each with a total of 30 points per week
-        Weekly walking projects – 50 points each
-        Therapy visits – 50 points each
-        Mid-term tests (visits with the specialist who runs time-trial measurements) – 100 points each
-        Final essay exam – 300 points each
The plan for success is just Patrick's plan for how he will accomplish his goals, his opportunity to select the homework assignments he wants to work on for this quarter, and a chance to make a list of potential weekly walking projects he will work on.  The one he is working on this week is getting a glass out of the cupboard, filling it with water and carrying it to the table, all while just using his walker.


The final exam essay is made up of 5 questions that Patrick already knows about that he needs to either write a response to or create a video.  These are questions like what did you accomplish, what will you do differently in the next quarter, what did you learn about goal setting and things like that.  I am hoping that he does a video response so that I can post it here for him to be able to refer back to.


We created a rubric to help him know how to grade himself on his daily homework and he is required to report in each day in order to get the points.  Not because he needs someone to keep tabs on him, but because there is a huge benefit to having an accountability partner.


Here is an example from his rubric, based on the 5 daily homework activities he selected.




5 points 4 points 3 points 2 points 1 point
Ready with orthotics on, stretching done Ready by 8 am Ready by 9 am Ready by 10 am Ready by noon Ready by afternoon
Squats for at least 25 minutes with proper form Proper form and more than 25 minutes of squats Proper form  and 15-25 minutes of squats Improper form and 15-25 minutes of squats Proper form and 1-14 minutes of squats Improper form and 1-14 minutes of squats
So far things have been going well and we are almost halfway through the quarter.  We'll keep you posted as things progress.

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