Background/Purpose: This study was part of a Carol White Physical Education for Progress Grant in the Saint Paul School District and park and recreation centers. The purpose was to determine if Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) curriculum would improve students' physical fitness levels and health-related knowledge.
Method: Participating agencies were 25 elementary schools and 21 park and recreation sites. Fourth-grade students (n=1,337) were taught using the CATCH curriculum. Physical fitness was assessed by MN-SHAPE (1998), and content knowledge was assessed using 35 multiple-choice questions from the health and nutrition unit in the Harcourt-Brace curriculum (2006). Treatment was the CATCH curriculum (2005) and was conducted at both schools and recreation centers. Research design was pretest-posttest. Trained physical education teachers collected data with the same protocol for the fitness and written tests.
Analysis/Results: Data were analyzed descriptively to obtain means, standard deviations, and ranges and inferentially by dependent t-tests to determine possible differences. For physical fitness test items, all means improved from pretest to posttest. Improvement was significant (p<.05) with push-ups and sit-ups for both boys and girls, and sit and reach for girls. Knowledge test results increased from pretest to posttest by 9% with 32 of 35 items on the knowledge test items significantly higher from pretest to posttest and three of the 35 items yielding lower scores.
Conclusions: Within the scope of this study, it can be concluded that collaboration of an urban school district and park and recreation centers resulted in improvement of fourth-grade students' overall health-related fitness levels and health-related knowledge.