Author: Brianne Farrall

In physical education, there are many opportunities to incorporate group work into
the classroom, however traditionally this group work often does not involve much conversation or deep discussion.  Standard group work in a physical education class involves working with a partner or small groups on specific skills and progressive activities.  After this, the class is usually put into two different teams and at the end of the class the teams play in a full-court/field version of the game or sport being taught.  However, this week in our physical education pedagogy class we learned how we can incorporate an inventing games unit into our year plans, and I think it can also be a great way to increase the amount of group discussion and conversation that typically takes place within group work.  Inventing games requires the student groups to choose their equipment, develop rules and structure for the game, as well as ensure that their game flows and is fair for both teams playing – among many other things.  For these aspects to be created, the groups need to be able to effectively
communicate and diplomatically make decisions.  This gives the instructor the opportunity to teach students about how to create an effective discussion forum, for example, appointing ‘jobs’ such as a scribe to record the information, a facilitator who keeps the group on task, as well as how to ensure all members have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation.  While going through their ‘inventing
games checklist’, groups are able to read the physical education specific language – such as offense, defense, boundaries, scoring, etc. – as well as use it in their conversations while they work on developing their game.  Once they have decided on some rules and structural components, the groups can test out their ideas and find out what is working and what is not.  With helpful cues and probing questions from the teacher, the students will continue to test their ideas and reconvene, continuing to use the discussion forum to problem solve and develop more aspects of their game.  I think this is also a great way to get ELL’s and non-participant students involved in a class they may not particularly like or understand as well because everyone gets an opportunity to listen to others and present their own ideas.

Ironically, as I was reading through this chapter on classroom discussions, many activities in this class as well as a few of my other classes were also focused on simulating and practicing meaningful classroom discussion. Participating in a variety of discussion activities from think-pair-share to the horseshoe continuum as well as reading through chapter 5 in the Zwiers textbook really solidified for me the impact classroom discussion can have on the type of learning that can take place. Even as university students and future educators, we too can at times forget how to stimulate discussion and discuss in an open-minded and non-judgemental manor and it was interesting to see the different ways our instructors managed and guided the discussion forum – especially when discussing hot topics such as assessment and corporate presence in high schools. Regarding this week’s reading, I was particularly interested in the 8 suggestions Zwiers discussed on page 115 about how to improve discussion-leading abilities as educators. Children lead by example, and if we as educators can be successful, open-minded discussers, then our students are likely to adopt those same strategies. I really liked the first strategy Zwiers mentions about motivating students with current issues, mysteries, and case studies – to list a few – because I think it’s really important to get students excited about discussion. We need to make it relevant for them and hook them in so that they will get excited about discussing. We do not need to limit talking about this such as Shakespeare just to the book, but also link it to current issues in order to make it more real and relevant for our students. Another suggestion I connected with in the reading was number 4 which talked about strategically redirecting tangential comments back to the main point of discussion. Often times children do have a lot to say, especially when excited about the discussion, and may go a bit off track. However, I do not think they should be punished for this by being made to feel like they answered or responded wrong. My grade 10 English teacher was great at doing this when we as a class would be discussing poetry or a novel we were reading. He never made it seem like our responses were wrong, even if they were quite off-track. He found some way to validate any response and then steer it back in the right direction, which I think was great because he made everyone feel like they were contributing to the discussion and it encouraged us to continue to participate. Finally, I really liked Zwiers last suggestion, number 8, where he suggests creating a list of class norms for classroom discussion. As tedious as this sounds, I think having the students contribute in deciding discussion etiquette will help them become more open-minded participants as well as hold them accountable when they do get fired up or opinionated about different topics. This way, everyone is clear about the expectations and will be more likely to follow them.

The concept that I related to most this past week from the Zwiers Chapter 4 reading was at the very beginning of the reading:

“As experts in our content areas, we teachers often have ‘expert blind spots’ that keep us from realizing that much of our complex and abstract knowledge has become concrete and basic to us”.

Although I understood what Zwiers was talking about when first reading this statement, I didn’t really connect with it until we started making our lesson plans.  My partner and I are subject ‘experts’ in physical education and we were having a really difficult time trying to tie in language to a P.E lesson – I can say that until now I have never even thought about the role language plays in a physical education classroom.  How do we teach language when playing games?  Ironically, as Zwiers discusses in the textbook, I thought to myself that language was something that is focused on in an English classroom … if I want to keep my students active I can’t be constantly stopping to talk about language.  We even found it difficult to decide on what words to include in our lesson.

We chose to do our first lesson on invasive team games and started coming up with some language for that, such as: offense, advancement, width, mobility, and offensive depth.  This was a good start, but we still were not sure how to create language activities.  Doing the group work on Wednesday was extremely helpful as we were paired with some Home Ec teacher candidates.  They pointed out that even a word like ‘attack’ could be an issue for ELLs because outside of the classroom, attack means something completely different.  Both my partner and I had not even considered that!  As well, Chelsea pointed out to us that simply explaining terms like advancement and width as we did our activities was a way to incorporate teaching language in P.E.  As an active teenager, I never had trouble understanding the language that was used in my P.E classes and it was very hard to put myself back into a students’ shoes, especially when having to consider the subject from an ELL perspective.  I have definitely gained a new appreciation for the impact language can have on a classroom and an beginning to understand the subtle ways I can incorporate it into my classroom practices.  It was also really great to hear what individuals in a different subject context thought about the language we use in P.E – it really shows how collaboration across subjects can be used to enhance the learning of our future students and be incorporated into our inquiry.

I would be lying if I said that the article by Lehr made complete sense to me.  Although I believe I have a solid grasp of the English language, both orally and in term of vocabulary and grammar, some of the language and sentence structure of this article left me slightly puzzled – I can only imagine how an ELL student feels!  That being said, there were certain concepts addressed by Lehr that stood out to me.  The think the concept of ‘acquiring ownership’ of words is a great way to think about how kids acquire and expand their vocabulary knowledge.  I agree with Lehr that both repetitive exposure as well as exposure in different contexts is extremely beneficial and helpful for developing and fully understanding how to use words.  Since English is my primary language, I rarely think about how difficult it is until someone, for example, one of my Greek co-workers asks me how to use a particular word in a sentence and why he cannot be used in the way they originally said.  I have found myself on many occasions at a loss for words or talking in circles in attempts to explain the grammatical ‘rules’.  Another example is when someone asks you to define a word, and although you know they word and have used it, you are unable to provide a helpful definition.  As Lehr suggests, “knowing a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition” – it is a process, a sort of continuum that we as educators need to realize in order to better understand why our students may be struggling with what we feel should be simple vocabulary acquisition.  Simply being able to spell a word, does not necessarily indicate an understanding of that word.

Two other aspects I find very important that Lehr mentions are the importance and balance of both reading and oral opportunities for vocabulary development.  I thoroughly enjoy reading (although I do not currently read for pleasure as I have so many school readings to do) and think that it was extremely helpful in developing my own vocabulary and language skills.  I really liked how Lehr explained that although as educators we need to encourage and guide students toward developmentally appropriate reading material, we also need to keep in mind that reading for pleasure that may not always reflect a student’s reading competency is okay.  Reading needs to continue to be fun in order to promote intrinsic motivation within children instead of them reading only when they are forced to.  I remember in one of my English classes in high school, instead of making everyone read the exact same book for their book report, my teacher gave a selection of 10 books for the students to choose from – some were more advanced and others were at the appropriate level.  It was the first time I had ever had a choice of what I wanted to read and it made me WANT to do the report because I actually found the content interesting.  Lastly, I really connected with the idea surrounding both educators and parents providing their children with opportunities to practice their oral vocabulary.  At dinner, my parents always asked me how my day was and the types of things I did at school or camp.  If I gave them a vague “it was good”, they would probe for a more in depth answer and looking back now, I really appreciate it.  I think as educators we will hopefully automatically do that, but I think it is our job to encourage the parents of our students, especially in the younger grades, to do the same.  Make suggestions and explain how this will benefit their child.  Some questions I did think of is how young is too young to start this process?  Should we really be using ‘baby-talk’ and nicknaming objects when our children are infants?  Just something to think about!