Year 6 Science - Heart Rates and Healthy Choices

Heart Rates and Healthy Choices

   

This half-term the children have been learning about diet, drugs and lifestyle choices. They are aware that there are legal and illegal drugs and that diet and lifestyle choices have an effect on the way their bodies function.  Today, we put some of that learning into action by investigating how exercise affects heart rate. The children began by making predictions about what might happen to their heart rate during and after exercise. They measured their resting heart rate, then completed intervals of exercise for 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes and finally 4 minutes, checking their pulse after each round.  The activity helped the children clearly see the link between physical activity and increased heart rate and it sparked lots of great discussion about why the heart works harder during exercise to supply the muscles with more oxygen.

"This experiment was fun and interesting.  Firstly, we jogged for 1 minute and then took our pulse. We kept on increasing the exercising time to see how much our heart rate increased.  Some were a bit tired at the end!" - Meerab, Redwood.

"I really liked this science experiment.  It was fun and exciting to see how our heart rate changed." - Aida, Birch.

"The jogging was really fun and easy, I should've run the Junior Marathon." - Kenzie, Larch.