Evaluating Active Initiatives

Overview

This is lesson 7 of 15 in Kiwi Tag: Get Active!. Students examine health promotion initiatives that encourage physical activity, evaluate how effectively they reach different audiences, and apply their findings to improve ideas for a new Kiwi Tag strategy.

Learning intentions

Students will:

• identify the purpose, audience and methods of physical-activity initiatives
• use evidence and agreed criteria to evaluate an initiative’s effectiveness
• explain how an initiative may influence participation, motivation and wellbeing
• generate practical insights for a new Kiwi Tag health-promotion strategy.

Success criteria

• I can describe what an initiative is trying to achieve and who it is designed for.
• I can use evidence to explain strengths and limitations.
• I can consider accessibility, inclusion and likely impact on different people.
• I can recommend a justified improvement or new strategy for Kiwi Tag.

Curriculum links

• Health and Physical Education – hauora and wellbeing: students examine factors that influence participation in physical activity and make informed decisions that enhance wellbeing.
• Health and Physical Education – health promotion: students evaluate actions and strategies that promote physical activity and participation.
• Health and Physical Education – socio-ecological perspective: students consider how individual, interpersonal, organisational and wider community factors affect activity.
• Key competencies: thinking; managing self; participating and contributing; relating to others; using language, symbols and texts.

Lesson structure (50 minutes)

1. 0–5 min · Hook and connection. Teacher opens the provocative hook slide and presents a short scenario: “A school launches a lunchtime activity programme, but very few students attend.” Students make an individual prediction about why participation might be low, then share one idea with a partner. Teacher links responses to the previous lesson’s discussion of barriers and enablers to physical activity.

2. 5–12 min · What makes promotion effective? Teacher uses the evaluation criteria slides to introduce five criteria: clear purpose, appropriate audience, accessibility and inclusion, appealing message or delivery, and evidence of likely impact. Briefly clarify that an initiative may be popular without producing lasting participation. Students annotate these criteria on the initiative evaluation organiser and suggest one example of evidence for each.

3. 12–25 min · Initiative investigation. Teacher forms five groups of five and assigns each group one initiative case study displayed in the case-study slides. Possible cases include a school active-transport campaign, a council recreation programme, a social-media movement challenge, a workplace activity initiative, and a youth sport participation campaign. Students read their case, identify its purpose and target audience, and record specific evidence about methods, strengths, limitations and possible barriers on the worksheet.

4. 25–35 min · Expert evaluation. Teacher asks groups to reach a shared judgement: highly effective, partly effective or unlikely to be effective for its intended audience. Each group must support its judgement with at least two pieces of evidence and consider who might be excluded or less motivated. Students prepare a 60-second report including one strength, one concern, one suggested improvement and a rating out of five.

5. 35–44 min · Reports and critical discussion. Teacher displays the reporting and discussion prompts and facilitates rapid group reports. After each report, one audience member asks a challenge question such as “What evidence supports that judgement?”, “Would this work for Year 13 students?” or “How could the initiative be more inclusive?” Students listen actively, compare initiatives and add useful insights to the final section of their worksheet.

6. 44–50 min · Kiwi Tag application and exit ticket. Teacher returns to the purpose of Kiwi Tag: Get Active! and asks students to identify which findings could strengthen its health-promotion strategy. Students complete the worksheet exit response: “The most effective feature we should use for Kiwi Tag is ___ because ___; one barrier we must address is ___.” Invite two or three students to share responses and collect worksheets for planning the next lesson.

Resources

• the Evaluating Existing Initiatives slide deck
• the initiative evaluation organiser
• Five age-appropriate physical-activity initiative case studies
• Projector or interactive display
• Pens or highlighters
• Timer
• Whiteboard and markers
• Group table labels

Assessment

• Listen during the hook and criteria discussion for students’ understanding of barriers, enablers and health-promotion purpose.
• Check group organisers and reports for specific evidence, balanced evaluation, attention to inclusion, and a justified judgement.
• Use the exit response to identify whether students can transfer their evaluation to the developing Kiwi Tag strategy; retain responses as formative evidence for lesson 8.

Differentiation

• Provide a case study with highlighted evidence and sentence starters such as “The initiative is designed for…”, “This is effective because…” and “A limitation is…”.
• Allow students to contribute through reading, note-taking, questioning, presenting or timekeeping; groups should still make one shared judgement.
• For EAL learners, pre-teach terms such as audience, access, participation, impact, barrier and evidence, with the words visible on the board.
• Extend confident students by asking them to distinguish between short-term engagement and sustained behaviour change, and to justify which evidence would be needed to test their claim.
• Ensure cases represent varied abilities, cultures, genders, financial circumstances and access needs; avoid requiring students to disclose personal health or activity information.