The last group teach was a fun way to end them all. Liz, Rob, Cheryl and Mary did a great job getting all of us involved and moving around with their instant activity. Movement is extremely important when teaching physical literacy and understanding how our bodies move. The group chose to do this through music and dance. I thought that this was a great game especially for kindergarten to grade 3. It is important to allow children to explore the different ways in which their bodies through animal movements. These different animal movements focus on locomotion skills which are considered to be fundamental in physical literacy.

Next we moved on to the small group discussions. My group was led by Liz. We talked a lot about  healthy living and well-being, we talked about how we could incorporate healthy living into our classrooms when we are not doing PE. This moved us into the main activity. There were more than 12 stations we could move to freely, without instruction. There were small explanations of what was to be done at each station and it was nice that we were allowed to move to the specific stations that we were interested in. Each station was optional. My one concern with this is making sure that your students are actually working at the station that they are at. Keeping them motivated to keep at that station or to try a new one might be tricky when you are the only teacher in the  gym with 30 students. The age group is also important to consider. Classroom management would really have to be monitored. Overall, I think that the group teach went well and it was a lovely way to end.

I had a great time teaching gymnastics to the class! As everyone already knew, I did gymnastics from age 3 to 12 and I presently coach gymnastics/physical literacy, so I was very excited to be able to have the chance to teach the class. I thought my group was very clear with our expectations of the lesson and the flow of our station rotation and the skills learned within each station went really well.

At my station, forward rolls and log rolls, I made each step for the forward rolls clear and almost everyone was able to do one at the end of the station. It was definitely one of the more challenging stations for some students but even if they were not able to “perfectly” perform a forward roll, they still had the chance to practice their log rolls. This was important because the skill being taught at my station was body rotations and although some students were not able to do the forward roll, they were still able to move and practice a different skill that focused on the same body movement. I had to be aware of the students that could not perform the forward roll because I did not just want them standing around for the entire rotation. I wanted everyone moving and being active throughout their entire time at each station.

We made a  number of changes to our lesson plan during the actual lesson. We realized we did not have enough time to do the final “gymnastics relay” and apply all the skills the students had learned to a larger scale activity. We also would have liked to include a small gymnastics routine portion where the students would have been able to create and incorporate the newly learned skills into a unique choreographed routine with their group. Another important thing we considered is how lucky we were to have 4 teachers to work with the students. Realistically, this lesson would have to be modified because there is typically just one teacher to 25+ students and it is impossible for that one teacher to physically be at every station helping students one on one if they needed it.

Overall, my group and I had a ton of fun teaching our lesson and we hope that everyone else had a great time! Thanks CITE!

Amazing job Zoe, Vivian and Jenny! You ladies were so motivating and I really liked how organized and efficient you were with your time. Your instant activity got everyone moving and it transitioned really well into the “Space Invasion” game.

Great work involving the readings about Teaching Games for Understanding into your lesson plan. The incorporation of each step being:
Step 1: Game –> Space Invasion
Step 2: Game Appreciation –> Taught us the game and then broke it down step by step for us and asked us how the game could be modified and what we learned from the version we were playing.
Step 3: Tactical Awareness –> Invading a territory and creating space and having spatial awareness of where the defenders are.
Step 4: Making Appropriate decisions –> If you were a defender, how did you successfully tag someone running through? If you were on offence, what strategies did you find that work/ didn’t work?
Step 5: Skill execution–> We used a ball to pass/ throw it to each team mate across the end line and then start over.

In our group discussion led by Zoe, she asked us which curriculum out of the 7 we were taught in elementary school. Our answer was pretty unanimous. We agreed that most of us experienced the curriculum model, Multi-Activity Model. We agreed that its purpose was to enable us to become physically active throughout our lifetime while being taught motor skills and maintaining an interest while learning about wide variety of sports and games.

Overall, great job!!

Great work Terence, Clarissa, Amanda and Rylan!! You al did an awesome job in your group teach for volleyball. I loved your collaboration as a team and the engagement of each of you. You definitely had control of the class and made it a very fun, safe and exciting learning environment. Wonderful work!!

I started playing volleyball in a team setting in grade 4. I was never really good at it until about grade 7 when I had some fantastic coaches and once I joined the Thunder Volleyball Club. Since then, I have absolutely loved the sport and was so happy to get to play a little during the group teach. You all did an awesome job at breaking down the skills in to easy yet fun building blocks. There was never a point when I thought someone was struggling. You al worked really well making sure that we were succeeding and trying to help when it was needed, as a teacher should.

I also really enjoyed our discussion about physical literacy. Where I work we “teach” physical literacy to children ages 6 month up to 7 years old through gymnastics. The articles that we read for class were very relevant to what I do at gymnastics and I was thrilled to be able to make that connection and see it play out in the gym. Physical literacy to me is super important and I believe that it should be seen as something that is fundamentally needed in all schools.

First day of Physical Education. It feels strange being back in this type of setting but at the same time, really great. Chuck the Chicken, what a great guy. Unfortunately for him, he was headless in my group. I had never heard of this game before this day but boy was this fun. It really made us work as a team and think of ways that we were able to make our team more efficient. I always enjoyed PE in school as I was a pretty active and sporty child (parents stuck me in gymnastics at age 3 because I was insane or something…) but there were definitely some not so great days when we would have fitness testing. I’m really excited to learn from Steve and see all of the different ways to teach a PE class and break away from the mould. I look forward to exploring new ways in which to support the physical literacy of children and incorporate it into a future PE class that I may teach.