Project by: Zachary Taschler (9th Grade), Max Cloud (9th Grade), Luke Schnall (9th Grade)
Project Advisor: Jeanette Ng
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Jeanette Ng, Antonio Valle and Jacqueline Baker.

Description of the Project:

We would like to do an Honors project on the effects that exercising has on stress. Our idea is to first research the benefits of exercise to reduce stress. Then we will all do an exercise every day for 2-4 weeks, with written descriptions about how we feel every week, and see how we feel and compare it to the research we did. We all play sports and all noticed that in weeks where we play harder, we tend to stress less, even when we have big assignments. So we thought an interesting honors project would be to commit to working hard physically and doing research to see why and how it affects our stress. We are curious about why and how this happens. we each will specialize in a different exercise, researching and testing the effects our exercise has on stress. For example, one of us will become an expert in the effects cardio training has on stress. Another one of us will become an expert in the effects weight training has on stress. Another one of us will become an expert in the effects team sports has on stress. Our data that we bring together, we will compare with each other at every level of this project then come to a decision on what we think was the best way to exercise and if exercising can successfully reduce stress for us.

Final Product:

Final Reflection on Learning:

This project didn’t only help us all limit our screen time and become more fit, but it also helped us see who we are as learners. We learned that we are all motivated to finish this project even if it what hard to accomplish. We learned we are all very hard working. But we also learned that we need to do a better job time managing.

Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3 (include any photos or video if relevant):

For the few weeks, we have been working hard on our project. We’ve spent the first week meeting for the first time and clearing up our ideas so we are all on the same page on what our project is going to look like exactly. Then through the next week researching. We all researched in our own categories about exercise and how it affects stress. We worked together s each of us brought different ideas to our research, though our research came to some same general ideas and conclusions.  Notes from our research can be found on our slide show. This most recent week, we have begun our own tests by doing our workouts and we are finishing our weekly summaries about how we feel. The summaries for this week will include explanations of our consistent and daily workouts, how we felt stress before starting the project, how we feel now, any connections we see in our research to how we work out, and other information. We have been meeting every Wednesday to work on our project as well as working outside of that team time. We have met with our mentor and showed progress.

Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6 (include any photos or video if relevant):

These next few weeks, we have all worked out every day and have been able to collect data due to this. We do need to do a better job scheduling meetings with Jeanette (our project mentor), because we have only met with her once or twice these past few weeks. We plan on concluding our workouts and data collecting in about a week or two. Once the workouts conclude we will be able to make our conclusion and see if the data matches with the research we had done in the beginning. As shown in the other progress report we have kept our research and data in a slide show. We must do a better job in continually posting in the slide show and showing that we have actually done the workouts and gotten our data. I believe it would also be smart to take some pictures of us working out.  We can take these in our final weeks of this project.

Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9 (include any photos or video if relevant):

In these final weeks of our project, we have been working out and collected even more data. A common theme amongst our found data was that all of our screen time had dropped dramatically. Ultimately we feel less stressed about in and out of school activities. The research that we did before we started shows to be correct. The link to the slide is provided here We have completed adding all of our data into our slide show along with summaries of how we after each week. Overall our group had an amazing time working on this project and hope to do more like this in the future.