In what ways is a discovery approach useful in game play?
It many ways it is useful in game play because the student learns the basics of an invasion or territory game. A great example was this morning during PE we played an invasion game, protecting the alien, it was so much fun and everyone was laughing and everyone was playful. It soon was a discovery for each student to learn when to move from your alien to try invade someones elses alien. Quickly we learned new strategies. It was so engaging. Then the game was extended by borders and grouping up once your alien was hit/knocked over. What sorts of questions enhanced student learning? New strategy, how to improve. Possibly leading to playing soccer or basketball in your later years. (If we were elementary school students) I did not have many questions, at the time as i was having fun and playing hard. It was a great work out. The modified ‘train capture the flag’ was fun too. Thanks to the group for a fun engaging class from warms ups to cool down.
I definitely agree with you–this week’s lesson and game was definitely fun and engaging! Like you said, we came to develop our own strategies as we became more accustomed to the game, and I love how the activity was competitive but became a team collaborative effort as soon as your alien was struck down. No losers here!
And I also agree that the questions that were asked–like the “enhanced student learning” one you mentioned–were rather thought-provoking as well. I found this week’s readings to be really interesting, and though it has its own difficulties, I find that I quite like the TGfU model and how it was applied this week. I enjoyed that we started with a basic, more simplified version of the game before moving onto the actual activity itself–it gave us time to get accustomed to the movements and the skills that we’d need to use. The fact that we asked ourselves what skills we were using and how we’d have to move in order to improve during the game is something we should strive to prompt our students to consider as well!
Hi Angie, I absolutely agree with you of how much fun playing invasion games was this week. I liked how everyone was spread out across the gym, but slowly we all came together as one large team. Every time we would begin a new game, we all had strategies of our own to keep our alien standing for the longest period of time. This game is great because all the students believe they are trying to win, but majority of this game is team-oriented. This will welcome all students to play because it doesn’t require partners and no one is left out.
I agree that this game is the perfect Segway into sports like soccer and basketball. Students will obtain some of the skills require to participate in these sports. This leads into the “teaching games for understanding (TGfU) approach.” TGfU games are a “thematic” approach to help students to learn about games through partaking in games. Another TGfU concept is that ‘every learner is important and involved’ and this touches base on how all of us were engaged in the invasion game. I really enjoyed this weeks lesson on invasion because I feel like I have learnt a lot, especially through TGfU diversions.