KINGSPORT, TN (WJHL)- Kingsport City Schools is incorporating new ways to help students be more active at school in an effort to meet a new Tennessee law that requires kids get more physical activity in school.

Teacher Kaitlyn Fleenor encourages her fifth grade science students at Lincoln Elementary to move around. “It kind of takes some time to kind of relinquish that control,” Fleenor said. This school year, she had 10 hokki stools introduced into her classroom that require students to move around in order to stay balanced. “I love them almost as much as they do,” Fleenor said. “It really keeps their attention, helps them to maintain that focus.”

The principal at Lincoln Elementary also created new physical activity time periods where kids can get additional exercise through walking. “Movement is encouraged at every level in every class,” said Misty Keller, Kingsport City Schools Coordinated School Health Coordinator. Keller said other schools in the district are incorporating physical activity into lesson plans and active labs will soon be installed at some elementary schools. “Those labs will have equipment like bicycle desks and strider and glider desks, standing work stations, different sorts of movement stools,” Keller said.

KCS implemented the new changes as part of the state’s new physical activity law that went into effect over the summer. Under the new law, kindergarten and first graders have to get 225 minutes of physical activity per week in school and second through sixth graders are required to get 160 minutes of activity per week. Students in 7th-12th grades are still required to get 90 minutes of physical activity in school per week. Keller said to help meet those requirements, “Now you will see kids in grades K-1 having three recess or physical activity periods during the day. Students in 2-6 also get more physical activity periods per day.”

Other local school systems that failed to meet last year’s state mandate that required 90 minutes of physical activity per week in school are also making changes this school year to ensure they meet the new requirements.

“Each high school will handle it on an individual basis,” said Carter County Schools Secondary Supervisor Danny McClain. Last school year, all of Carter County’s high schools failed to meet the 90 minute physical activity law. McClain said, “We’re looking at possibly doing some flex lunches where our students can get a break after lunch and possibly do some walking exercises. We’re looking at early morning and even afternoon breaks for our students just to get out and about, move around.”

More than half of Greene County’s 16 schools also failed to meet the activity mandate last school year. Greene County Director of Schools David McLain said, “We want to incorporate [things] such as brain breaks, Go Noodle, chair yoga; different things we can do within the classroom [that] we can count towards that; that’s what we want be able to do.”Copyright 2016 WJHL. All rights reserved.