TempoLife › Features › Teacher and school pack › steps-class-challenge
A class step challenge
Teams record their daily steps on a printable scoreboard for a week or two, set a shared goal, and reflect on how activity fits into a day. The focus is participation, goal-setting and handling data — not winners and losers by fitness.
Learning objectives
By the end of the activity, students can:
- Set a realistic team activity goal and track progress towards it.
- Record and total daily data accurately.
- Find everyday opportunities to be more active (walking, stairs, active travel).
- Reflect on activity as part of a normal day rather than a one-off event.
The activity
- Set up: split the class into small teams. Anyone with a phone or watch can record steps; those without can log active minutes instead so nobody is excluded. Agree a class or team goal from a baseline day.
- Daily (2 min): each team enters yesterday's steps or active minutes on the scoreboard and keeps a running total.
- Midpoint: check progress against the goal and discuss what is helping (stairs, walking at break, active travel).
- Wrap-up: total the fortnight, celebrate participation and improvement rather than only the highest number, and complete the reflection.
The worksheet
This prints as a clean sheet — press print and the site header, footer and this instruction row drop away. Photocopy for a class as needed.
Team name: ________________________ Our goal for the week: ________________ steps (or active minutes).
Enter each day's team total and keep a running total in the last column.
| Day | Team total today | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | ||
| Tuesday | ||
| Wednesday | ||
| Thursday | ||
| Friday | ||
| Saturday | ||
| Sunday |
1. Did you reach your goal? If not, how close did you get?
2. Which day was highest, and what were you doing?
3. Name three ways your team added steps without going out of your way.
4. What is one change you would keep after the challenge ends?
- ☐ Everyone in the team took part, in one form or another.
- ☐ We recorded our total every day.
- ☐ We found at least one new way to be active.
Assessing this activity
This resource is open-ended and has no single correct answer. Assess it on the quality of reasoning and evidence rather than a fixed key — the teacher notes below explain what a strong response looks like.
Teacher notes
- Include everyone: let students without a tracker log active minutes, and judge success by participation and improvement, not raw step counts, so it is fair regardless of fitness or mobility.
- Be alert to over-competition. If anyone starts over-exercising to "win", reframe towards the shared goal and everyday movement.
- Cross-links to maths (totals, averages, graphs — plot the running totals) and PSHE (habits, goal-setting). Trackers only estimate steps, which is a nice discussion about measurement error.
A teaching resource, not medical or dietary advice. Handle food, sleep, sugar and energy topics sensitively with young people, and follow your school's pastoral and safeguarding procedures if a pupil raises a concern.
Frequently asked questions
What level is this for?
Suits any key stage with PE or PSHE; scale the maths to the group.
Can I print and photocopy it?
Yes — press print (Ctrl+P / Cmd+P) and the site chrome disappears, leaving the worksheet. It is free for classroom use.
Is there an answer key?
This resource is open-ended, so there is no single answer key — the teacher notes explain how to assess it.
Source: Standard public guidance (EFSA reference values, EU labelling rules, Atwater energy factors) and simple arithmetic · checked 2026-09-02
Other resources
Reading a nutrition label
Students learn to read a back-of-pack nutrition label — per 100 g versus per serving, the ingredients list, the sugars and salt lines and front-of-pack colours — using a worked example with invented figures, then answer questions from it.
A week of hydration
Students record their drinks for a week on a simple grid, then reflect on when they drink, what counts towards fluid, and how needs change with weather and activity. Built around European adequate-intake figures.
A one-week sleep diary
Students keep a seven-night sleep diary — bedtime, wake time, hours, how rested they feel and their evening screen use — then look for their own patterns. Uses the recommended 8–10 hours for teenagers as the reference.
What does a portion look like?
A hands-on activity where students use the hand-portion method and a balanced-plate model to plan a meal, then label a blank plate. Focus is on estimating amounts without a scale, not on calories or dieting.
How much sugar is in that drink?
Students use real drink labels to calculate the sugar in a serving and convert it to teaspoons (4 g each), turning an abstract "22 g" into something they can picture. A maths-and-measures task, framed around understanding labels rather than banning drinks.
Where does our food come from?
A discussion-led activity in which students trace the origins of common foods and weigh up "food miles" — while learning that distance is only one part of a food's environmental footprint. An open-ended enquiry, not a right-answer quiz.
Take the tracking activities further
The step-challenge and sleep-diary activities carry straight into TempoLife, a free habit tracker students can keep using after the lesson.