Adding a 15-miute rope skipping activity to physical education class: The effect on students’ physical activity levels

The intervention will be a 15-minute rope skipping activity that is implemented by the class physical education (PE) teacher at the start of four consecutive PE lessons. After the rope skipping activity, the normal lesson will be resumed. A four-lesson duration was chosen because, following Hong Kong governmental guidelines, the typical length of teaching an activity during PE is four lessons. In the first two lessons of the four-lesson intervention period, a skipping ambassador (i.e., a university student with rope skipping performance experience) will be sent to each class to assist the teacher in running the 15-minute activity and instructing students. A 4-hour workshop will be provided to teachers of classes allocated to the experimental group. The goal of running the workshop is to teach PE teachers basic rope skipping skills, and to demonstrate how the intervention could be delivered in their class. Rope skipping ambassadors will also attend the workshop to familiarize themselves with the teachers and the structure of the 15-minute activity. The workshop will be led by a professional rope skipping coach (“the coach”), who has taught as a full-time school PE teacher. The workshop will consist of four sections. In the first section, teachers will be taught rope skipping techniques. These techniques will be included in the two 15-minute rope skipping activities proposed to teachers. In the second section of the workshop, the coach will demonstrate the two proposed 15-minute rope skipping routines that could be implemented by teachers during their lessons in the intervention period. In this session, teachers will be asked to follow the routine led by the coach. The goal of this task is to help teachers understand how the intervention could be implemented, and to experience the intervention from a student’s perspective. In the third section of the workshop, the coach will discuss with teachers good and poor practices when conducting the intervention, in terms of how to maximise students’ physical activity within the 15-minute period. Videos will be shown to teachers to assist in the discussion. Videos of good practices will feature the coach teaching one technique by 1) breaking down the skill into series of easier skills; 2) allowing students to adjust to different levels of difficulty; 3) helping students develop the skill by drawing on their previous rope skipping skills and experiences. These practices will encourage students even of lower abilities to remain engaged in physical activity. In contrast, the video showing poor teaching practices will feature the coach 1) spending too much time teaching verbally when students stand or sit still; 2) teaching a skill that may be too difficult for most students. In the fourth section of the workshop, the rope skipping coach will lead discussion about potential challenges teachers may face when conducting the intervention, and ways to overcome these obstacles. Teachers will be encouraged to contribute to the discussion by drawing on their experiences at their respective schools and during the workshop. The goal of the discussion is to ensure all teachers have similar knowledge and expectations for conducting the rope skipping activity, and therefore reduce the discrepancies in the actual implementations of the activity. Teachers in the experimental group will be asked not to discuss the content of the workshop with control group teachers whom they may encounter. To ensure intervention fidelity (experimental group) and test for any contamination effects (control group), a rater blinded to study hypotheses will observe all the PE lessons run by each teacher during the follow-up period (including experimental and control groups). The System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time (SOFIT; McKenzie et al., 1991) will be used by the rater to record the activities students engaged in during each lesson. Further to rating the activity levels of students using the protocol, raters will also record whether the student is engaging in activities related to rope skipping. Raters will be university students from a Hong Kong university. They will receive a 2-hour training session on how to use the rating protocol used in the study. Video recordings of PE lessons, for classes in both experimental and control groups, during the intervention period will be made. At least one rating made by each rater will be cross-checked by an investigator of the study using the recorded videos clips to ensure accuracies of ratings and inter-rater reliability.