Reflecting back on my childhood, I can always remember being and still remain an active individual. Physical Education was something I looked forward to in school, as I have been fortunate enough to have a predominately positive experience with it. During our EDCP 320 class we had this past week, it became clear to me that not everyone had the same mindset towards Physical Education. Many of my fellow classmates could recall negative experiences that they had with the subject. As an aspiring educator, this is a very important aspect to keep in mind when creating lesson plans. Underlying factors such as games that may initiate bullying or ignite personal insecurities should be avoided. Taken from last weeks lesson, as teachers, we need to think of the gym as a bigger classroom and give each activity a purpose. These activities need to maintain explicit rules, and should never leave or single a child out. Playing Chuck the Chicken not only highlighted these types of strategies, but allowed us to see first hand, how beneficial the game is. My colleagues were developing strategies such as throwing the chicken further, or maintaining tighter circles. As a result, the game seemed to create an engaging atmosphere where students had to work together as a whole in order to reach an end result. This type of game, along with the strategies I have learned from this experience will be something I hope to use in my future Physical Education classes.
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Great post Lexi! As far as I can remember I really enjoyed P.E. in elementary school as well. When high school rolled around it was a bit less enjoyable and I looked forward to being able to drop the subject after Grade 10. I like what you said about being an inspiring educator. This is so important! When teaching P.E. it is almost as though we need to put an extra effort into how we plan this lesson. I used to see P.E. as a lower priority than academics but the past two weeks in this EDCP 320 has opened my eyes to the importance of P.E. in elementary school. We as educators have a responsibility to provide an inclusive positive environment for our students as we are going to be providing the building blocks for their future as active adults. If we can build up a positive environment and community in P.E. then this should continue outside of the classroom. Through our modeling and actions we can instill skills and enjoyment that our students need to continue being active outside of school.
With this being said, I agree that the chuck the chicken game was a good example of a positive environment. The group/individual participation encourages a healthy form of competition in that other students are encouraging the runner. This game is also fun for students; I mean, how often do you get to through a rubber chicken around?!