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 (link address: http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/catch/curriculum_home_team.htm), CATCH Physical Education (http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/catch/curriculum_pe.htm), Eat Smart School Nutrition Guide (http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/catch/curriculum_eat_smart.htm), and family Home Team (http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/catch/curriculum_home_team.htm) 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 (School Name)?
- Improving the nutritional quality of school meals by promoting and coordinating 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.
(http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/catch/PDF_Files/GO-SLOW-WHOA_11-04-10.pdf) - 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 at Murchison?
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 a CATCH Champion, Coach Brandon Williams. The CATCH Champion is the Master Coordinator of CATCH on our 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.”
CATCH 2010-2011 Happenings at Murchison:
- CATCH Family Night
