I learned a lot this week about Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). When I was younger, I remember playing games in physical education and how fun they were but I never realized how the skills we learned could be so transferable to other activities until I got older. I believe in PE we need to expose children to many different skills but also let them know that everything they are learning has a purpose. If a child believes that what they’re learning in PE has a purpose that can be applied to many activities then they may be more willing to participate.

This week for our group discussion we were talking about what is important and I realized that for me it was multi activities. If you expose a child to many different ways to use a skill then the child has more chance of succeeding in one of them. This week’s group nicely broke down how we gradually build on a skill then make it harder to challenge ourselves. At first, when we were playing the main game and our group had to get to the other side I was wondering why the cones on the far side were not closer. The other team’s arms were not long enough to reach us so we just had to walk across. I learned as the game gradually got harder that there was a purpose to the distance. In the last part, the other team could take one step and that allowed them to protect their area, which I found made it impossible to get across. It made me realize the steps we take to teach a game. You want to allow a group to get confident in the game then let them build strategies. You do not want to discourage anyone by making a game too hard where they feel they will not succeed.