CATCH

What is CATCH?

CATCH (Coordinated Approach To Child Health) is a TEA approved Coordinated School Health Program designed to promote physical activity, healthy food choices, and prevent tobacco use in elementary school aged children. By teaching children that eating healthy and being physically active every day can be FUN, the CATCH Program has proved that establishing healthy habits in childhood can promote behavior change that carry into adulthood.

CATCH is a resource or tool that builds an alliance of parents, teachers, child nutrition personnel, school staff, and community partners to teach children and their families how to be healthy for a lifetime. The four CATCH components – Go For Health Classroom Curriculum, CATCH Physical Education, Eat Smart School Nutrition Guide, and family Home Team activities – reinforce positive healthy behaviors throughout a child’s day and make it clear that good health and learning go hand in hand.

How is CATCH benefiting the students, staff and families at Round Rock ISD Middle Schools?

  • Improving the nutritional quality of school meals, and promote and coordinate ideas for linking good food to good health.
  • Promoting the consumption of more GO foods than SLOW foods and more SLOW foods than WHOA foods.
  • Providing teachers with user-friendly,easy to implement resources that blend health topics with core academic areas.
  • Getting students, parents and extended family members involved in practicing and adopting healthy eating and physical activity behaviors at home.
  • Promoting student’s enjoyment and participation in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during PE classes, extra-curricular activities, and recreation time with family and friends.

 

What are the CATCH goals?

  1. Increase moderate to vigorous physical activity.
  2. Increase fruit & vegetable consumption.
  3. Decrease TV viewing to no more than 2 hours per day.
  4. Decrease sugar sweetened beverage consumption (i.e. sodas, energy drinks, vitamin water, sports drinks, etc).

 

What does CATCH look like on our campus?

We have CATCH Champion at each of our ten middle schools. The CATCH Champion is the Master Coordinator of CATCH on each campus. It is the role of the CATCH Champion to lead the CATCH Team in the coordination and implementation of the CATCH Program to ensure faculty and staff are creating a healthy/healthier school environment and promoting healthy habits.

We have a CATCH Team.

  • The CATCH Team is a core group of volunteer faculty and staff, representing all areas of the campus who determine the steps the campus will pursue each year to help their students, “Make the healthy choice the easy choice.”
  • We use the CATCH Coordination Toolkit as a campus to provide simple, doable tasks that drive school wide coordination.
  • We have GO/SLOW/WHOA signage in the cafeteria and around our campus.
  • Our classroom teachers have declared their classrooms Healthy Zones.
  • Our faculty uses Activity Breaks (short bouts of physical activity during class time) to reactivate the brain through full body movement.
  • During PE we implement CATCH games and the CATCH philosophy to ensure our students are engaged in Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) at least 50% of the PE class.
  • Teachers incorporate the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade CATCH lessons into their subject lesson plans to promote healthy eating, adequate sleep, physical activity, and water consumption.
  • We participate in the CATCH sponsored “get ur 60” campaign and provide open gym/physical activity time outside of PE # times a week (before/during/after schools).
  • We participate in the CATCH sponsored “get ur H20” campaign and encourage students to drink water in place of sugar sweetened beverages.
  • We host a CATCH Family Event each academic year to encourage families to eat healthy and be active together.