Wow, what a semester! It’s so weird to think that the PE course is over. This semester, we were thrown into the world oh physical literacy and education where we challenged our previous notions and idea. The group today on Nutrition and Health fully showed how to make PE lesson cross curricular. We showed how to not only extend lessons from previous classes and bring them into the PE setting, but how to make educational and engaging activities for our students. The activities we did today, like the health food race, and the warm up, were not only fun, but really brought in the knowledge of the food pyramid and how to make healthy choices. The importance of bringing in healthy choices and having that discussion with your students is super important in today’s society, especially since everything is digitized and processed. Incorporating subjects and topics such as the health food pyramid really brought the lessons and activities into context and helped everything to make sense. The presenters really did a fantastic job in facilitating the group and treating us like their given age group. It was a lot of fun to see another cross-curricular lesson and learning about healthy choices! 😀
My Journey – Movement Journal
Since September, I started to notice how many children within my classrooms have a hard time sitting still. I began to realize that many of them are going through similar experiences to mine. In fact, since I started to attend school again for the BEd Program at UBC, I noticed just how hard it is for me to sit still in class. Luckily since I am in the IB Cohort, many activities we do in class are hands on. But regardless, I still get very restless and jittery and distracted in class to the point where I can’t focus. Having these feelings as an adult helps me to understand how difficult it may be for younger students who haven’t had the experience needed to successfully manage themselves (even I can’t sometimes!).
Incorporating physical education into everyday classroom education is important, and helps children who have a difficult time maintaining attention and focus due to restlessness. For me, I have two techniques that help me maintain my attention. 1) Drawing and doodling in class allows me to relax my mind and body, which helps me have a clear mind to listen to the instructor. 2) Exercise, which helps to release unnecessary energy and ticks that may be affecting me during the day, resulting in a never ending restlessness.
In fact, many studies have been done that showed positive signs between exercise, cognition, and attention. Incorporating physical education into the classroom has many benefits.
- 30 Minutes of exercise before school helps kids focus and manage moods.
- Exercise preps the brain for learning and encourages appropriate neurotransmitter connections which helps to retain important information.
- Controls aggression, and results in a better sleep.
Source: http://www.additudemag.com/slideshow/129/slide-5.html
Health and Physical Literacy
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.
October 21st – Movement Journal #5: Gymnastics
What a great class today! Amy, Sydney, and Maria did such a wonderful job teaching gymnastics to younger children (Kindergarten). I was admittedly skeptical when I first saw Gymnastics as something we could potentially teach in the primary years, but they did a great job of focusing on one gross motor skill that is essential to gymnastics: balance.
They had three stations set up (walking along the beam, balancing a bean bag on your head, and re-ordering yourselves as a team on the beam). I enjoyed the last station the most because it generated a lot of communication and creativity amongst our team. We tried different strategies to move ourselves in the right order, and realized this activity could be adjusted to meet the skill level of any grade.
This class actually reminded me of an a activity I observed in my practicum school during PE. Their instructor divided the class into groups of 2-3 members and they played a modified version of Twister. The instructor would call out “Show me two legs and two arms!” or “Show me three legs and four arms!” It definitely showed creativity and problem-solving skills from the students.
October 14th – Movement Journal #4 (Teaching Summary)
This week, Fiona, Sienna, and I were in charge of doing the teaching summary for chapters 4 and 5, “Planning for Instruction” and “The Instructional Process.”
What really stood out to me was this practice of proactive planning and thinking ahead before creating a unit plan. Instead of asking ourselves, “What am I going to teach tomorrow?” educators are encouraged to ask, “What sports/dances/games am I going to teach this year?” By taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of a school year as opposed to an individual PE class, educators set themselves up for success as the plan for instruction.
The chapter looks at working backwards:
- Examining Curricular Documents
- Developing a Yearly Plan
- Developing a Unit Plan
- Establishing Objectives
When I was reading the chapters, I was pleasantly surprised that curricular documents were emphasized as we are at a point in the program where we are all trying to figure out where to even begin in lesson plan making.
When I looked at the BC curriculum for PE 4, I realized that physical educators are given a lot of freedom on the content they choose to teach throughout the year. Here is an example of how I planned using the new curriculum:
Big Idea: Personal choices and social and environmental factors influence our health and well-being.
Core Competency: Examine and explain how health messages can influence behaviours and decisions.
Content: factors that influence self-identity, including body image and social media
Activity: A unit on looking at commercials and advertisements targeted to inform and misinform consumers (e.g. Coca Cola ads, yogurt commercials)
Lesson planning is still a work in progress, but it was helpful to try it myself, knowing I have freedom on the actual content/activities but have the curriculum as my guide.
Movement Journal- week 10
It was our last group teach for PE last Friday. I thought the group did an amazing job on teaching health and physical literacy. The instant activity of spelling out letters was fun and gave us the opportunity to be creative (I love the CITE photo Steve took). I was in Cheryl’s group for reading discussion; the summary was clear and concise, which gave us the chance to reflect more for discussion. I learned new information and strategies for facilitating health and physical activities into other subjects and I had fun listening to other people share their experiences. The warm up and the cool down were awesome; I can imagine grade 2-3 students would be really engaged with acting out as wild animals in the jungle. Also, this is a great activity to do a cross curriculum with a drama class! I loved the main activity and I was able to get to 13 out of the 16 stations. We all had so much fun; they must have spent a lot of time preparing for all those stations and setting up. I like how they connected different subjects to the activities at different stations, such as art, music, English and health. This last PE lesson was a great demonstration of how to do cross curriculum with PE and other subjects and it was very well taught!
Physical Literacy- Week 9 Post
What an amazing way to wrap up PE 320! Cheryl, Elizabeth, Jennifer and Rob pulled off the most intricate physical literacy lesson. I believe there was over 16 stations with various activities and levels of engagement. I really enjoyed the free-play nature of this lesson. Being able to engage with different stations and tasks and move on as you please was wonderful. I enjoyed that there were multiple stations that weren’t being used so you could always move along without having to take turns and wait. The lesson was very well designed in this sense. I would have enjoyed travelling with a partner for a little more motivation to read and try some of the other activities. My favourite activities were those where I got to colour a flower with motivational phrases, the meditation station and the goal making template. For me, I was always the type of PE student who preferred to participate in sports so it was nice to challenge myself by doing more low key activities. I can see how this lesson was designed for all learners. Although this lesson seemed like a lot to organize, most activities were quite simple to coordinate and doing it over the course of a few weeks would be worth the effort. The group had put a lot of thought into aspects of the lesson from the tic-tac-toe organizer that encouraged movement to stations and the way they approached us during the lesson and encouraged us to challenge ourselves and stay on-task.
The Final Post
How do I plan, participate, and advocate for School Based Physical Activity? An important question that as educators it is our responsibility to encourage the school as a whole to be more physically active. This increase in physical activity does not need to be drastic by building a new gymnasium. Physically active lifestyle choices can be implemented into the daily routine of the individual class. I would encourage fellow educators to start their day with a brisk morning walk, approximately 20 minutes, and during this walk the class can engage in cross-curricular education. One morning the students could be observing for scientific research, for example, the different types of moss. I would also recommend for schools that have limited Physical Education time, anything less than once a day, to combined blocks with other classes to optimize student physical activity. Finally the last tool that I would use to increase the physical activity of the whole school would be once a month offers a “sports day”. This program would change monthly to adapt to the weather. During the winter months I suggest a school trip to a swimming pool, skating rink, or a ski hill. This program would expose students of all ages to the wide variety of sports related positions.
Through adaptations to the school as a physically active environment we will encourage students to become lifelong students of health and physical education. By supporting students at a young age we are setting them up with the knowledge and skill base that they need to strive in the future. By educating students on healthy eating practices they will be prepared to make healthy choices throughout their life. The programs that encourage healthy eating habits are present in PE class, Science, and Home Economics. Cross-circular programs that encourage students to inquire about their health is the future. The presence of school or community gardens is impressive. By teaching students to get dirty and grow their own vegetables we are teaching them valuable life long skills.
BC Wheelchair Sports
This was so much fun! I loved learning about the sports options available, and the education programs and grant programs that they provide. All of the representatives from each organization were friendly and excited about sports. I love sports and believe they are so important. I want to tell everyone about how much fun wheelchair basketball is! And that they can play tennis or rugby and everyone can play, not just adults. I loved the kids and the party options. I should be honest and say that I was a little bit nervous about being in the chair and playing the games, but I have always been not so much of a risk taker. Other students in our class loved it! I am glad I got to experience it and learn about bc wheelchair sports.
We read an article in our social justice class about how sometimes having students “pretend” or act out a disability in order to get their point of view can actually have more negative effects that positive effects. I do think that is true if not done with proper care and attention. Having the professionals come in and teach us was a great way to raise awareness to an issue, and was a lot of fun and a great work out at the same time. PE can easily be modified simply by changing the rules or introducing some special equipment, but it is not as daunting of a task as I originally thought. BC Basketball and BC Wheelchair sports are another great resource we can use in our future careers as teachers. Spread the Word!
Week 11 – Response to Guiding Questions
What is the importance of collaborating and sharing ideas and resources?
As a teacher candidate, I am walking into the teaching environment as a fresh slate. With this comes advantages and disadvantages. Most importantly, I have little knowledge of the physical education classroom that I can apply to my own teachings in the future, besides what I have learned about in EDCP 320. The importance of collaborating, sharing ideas, and resources is that you should be taking ideas from your fellow teacher candidates and more experienced teachers to create the best classroom culture and physical literacy environment that you can have. As someone who grew up being quite weak in physical education class, I know that I valuable perspective for those students who do not love to exercise or feel that they are good or that they enjoy certain sports. What this means for my students is that I can support their needs better than someone who has excelled at PE their entire life. On the other hand, perhaps those who excel in PE would be better off with a teacher. These are the people I need to be collaborating with so that I can create an inclusive environment for everyone.
How will I support and create conditions for student growth, success and enjoyment?
I will support and create conditions for student growth, success and enjoyment by creating a positive atmosphere. I don’t care how long it takes for me to build this culture at the beginning of the year. To me, the most important part of a physical education classroom will be the fact that it is a safe and inclusive environment for everyone. Name calling or teasing will be addressed immediately as something that is absolutely not tolerated in my classroom. With this type of inclusive environment I will be giving my students the tools they need to succeed in physical education. As well, I strongly believe that a growth mindset needs to be supported in every classroom, so I will constantly model and share this mindset with their students so that they will not think that their ability in any sport will be stagnant, but as something that can improve with time. Lastly, I hope students will have a chance to try many different types of physical activity so that they will learn to love and enjoy a variety types of physical activity.