We think the answer to this question is simple. Teaching is not about us; it's about the children. Regardless of the physical activities teachers enjoy and feel confident teaching, we need to teach content based on the educational needs of children and the National Standards for Physical Education. Knowledge of and a basic competence in dance is not only critical to being well educated but recognises that children find dance meaningful and joyful. Most of us who chose to become physical education teachers followed this career pathway because of the positive experiences we had in sports, our deep love of sports, and our desire to make a difference in children's lives. It is the rare physical education major who has had experience on a dance team or in studio dance classes, however. The result is that too few physical education teachers include dance as a significant part of the physical education curriculum. We would like to convince you to add this content to your classes. We think it is natural to want to share with our students those experiences we cherished when we were students. Early in our careers, most of us enjoyed teaching those activities we most enjoyed doing ourselves. However, as we grew as teachers, things changed. We found a great deal of pleasure in teaching activities that we never thought we would enjoy. Our focus and professional satisfaction shifted to what children found joyous and meaningful, what was important for their education, and what helped them understand and participate fully in the social and cultural world. Physical education must be bigger than sports and include all of the socially significant physical activities that children and adults find meaningful and worthwhile. I can't dance myself, so how can i possibly teach dance? This is an important question and one that has stopped many physical education teachers from teaching dance. We offer two points to consider. First, we ask you to consider the assumption underlying this question. Many people assume that you must be able to perform a skill or activity to teach it. We do not accept this assumption. The fact is that few elite gymnastics coaches can do the skills they teach their athletes. Being able to perform a skill is not a prerequisite for being able to teach it. You can learn to teach new activities successfully and in a way that is professionally satisfying and beneficial to the students under your care. Second, teachers have a professional obligation to continue to expand their knowledge of the subject matter of their field in alignment with the National Standards. No one should expect that what they know when they graduate college at age 21 is all they will need to know for the rest of their lives. Being a good teacher means being a continual learner. It means "doing your homework", attenting conferences, reading the professional literature and visiting internet sites, taking risks, and trying new ideas. You need to be knowledgeable about all the subject matter you are responsible for teaching, and there are many ways to acquire knowledge of physical activities in addition to performance. Taken from Elementary Physical Education (2nd ed) Curriculum and Instruction; Rovegno, I, Bandhauer, D.
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No one would argue against the idea that in order to be physically active you need to be able to move and that to move you need to be somewhat skilled in moving. The big issues related to the role of motor skills in developing a physically active lifestyle involved around questions related to how skilled you have to be and in what skills. As a physical educator you will need to decide how best to design your curriculum to help your students lead a physically active lifestyle, In order to do this you will need to commit yourself to a position on some of these issues. Some of the more common positions on developing motor skills for a physically active lifestyle are discussed below.
POSITION 1: Engage students in enjoyable physical activity Some physical educators believe that the most important thing that physical education programs can do to prepare students for a physically active lifestyle is to engage students in enjoyable physical activities. Professionals who support this position are not highly concerned with developing motor skills. Rather than choose activities that require skill to be successful participants, professionals who support this position would argue that we need to choose to teach those activities that do not require a great deal of skill. Age-appropriate fun activities that encourage all students to be active participants make up a large part of the curriculum for professionals who support this position. Many professionals who support this view feel as though students do not want to learn motor skills and that the process of learning motor skills is not as enjoyable experience and therefore should not be a major program emphasis. From an "enjoyable physical activity" perspective, students in the younger grades are likely to be involved in what we have come to call low organisation kind of games, not unlikely those you might see children playing on the playground (Red light, Green light / Hopscotch / Tag). Most of these games do not require a great deal of instruction in terms of the motor skills necessary to play them and most children (except for those who are not as good as many in the class) enjoy playing them. For teachers who advocate engaging students in enjoyable physical activities, the curriculum for students at the middle school level is likely to involve a broad range of different activities. Some of these activities may be related to organised sport and some may be more related to activities this age group may experience outside of school (e.g., inline skating, orienting) or more advanced low organisation games (e.g., pickle-ball, disk golf). Team sport activities are most often modified to reduce the skill expectations and are played in small-sided teams with little skill preparation. High school programs that target the idea of providing "fun" activities for participation usually involve units that are short, may be modified forms of sports, and have very limited skill instruction. Students spend most of the time in the unit playing the activity or game rather than learning how to be a skilful participant. Support for the position that advocates engaging students in a fun physical activity is based upon the idea that if you engage students in enjoyable physical activity they will continue to seek to be physically active. A great deal of the support for this position as a major direction of physical education comes as a reaction against traditional physical education programs. Programs that are heavily focused on sports, and particularly team sports, require high levels of skill that may be beyond both the ability and interests of the very students who need most to be physically active. A major assumption of this perspective on curriculum is that learning to be skilful is not an enjoyable experience, and many physical education programs destroy a student's desire to be physically active because they put students in positions where they cannot be successful. POSITION 2: Develop competence in motor skills Physical educators who advocate developing competence in motor skills as a primary purpose of physical education have a similar goal to those professionals who want to engage students in physical activity. Advocacy for developing motor skill competence comes primarily from a perspective that argues that people are likely to be participants in physical activity if they are good at physical activities. Some research support for this position comes from studies that have found that youth who are most active are those who are participants in sport activities (organised sport or less structured activities). Youth who are not participants in sport like activities that are not participating in other kinds of activity. They are just inactive. Likewise, there is some support for the idea that inactive youth become inactive adults and active youth are more likely to be active adults. Additional support for this position comes from research that shows that adult participants have a level of competence in the activities they are participating in and do not participate in those activities for which they are not skilled. Curriculum for elementary school students in a program with motor skill competence as a primary objective can take many forms. The major distinction will lie between those programs that organise the development of motor skill competence in terms of specific-skills (overhand throw, tennis forehand, forward roll) and those programs that tend to organise skills by movement concepts or skill themes (throwing, striking, rolling), In both cases the argument for curriculum choices is based on the idea of teaching younger students basic skills and movement abilities that are fundamental to the development of more complex and specific motor skills. In other words, elementary teachers from this perspective want students to be skilful at basic patterns such as the overhand throw pattern, which can then be used in more specific skills such as the tennis or volleyball serve, baseball, or softball. A major assumption of this position is that these fundamental and basic patterns do positively transfer to more specific patterns. Research would support the idea that particular abilities related to these patterns do transfer, which would make learning the more specific pattern easier. However, no one is suggesting that if you can throw a ball overhand you can do a tennis serve. Competence in motor skills for middle school students usually involves teaching the skills of a variety of basic sport and individual activities and the ability to use them in modified and less complex forms of the sport and activity. Because the high school level programs is the last formal instruction in physical activities for many students, for those who think developing motor skills are important, the focus at this level is on developing skills the student can actually use in play and activity settings as a participant outside of physical education class. Most high-school curriculum professionals would advocate that students at this level be given choices of activities and that they be held accountable for developing enough skill in the activity to be a likely participant outside of school in that activity. Choice is important because while most high school students do enjoy physical activity, they do not enjoy the same physical activities. The national standards published by NASPE (1995, 2004) largely support developing competence in motor skills. The first standard identifies competence in motor skills as a primary objective of programs. Because program time is limited, physical educators who support developing motor skill competence will have to decide on the skills they think are most critical to develop. In the past, most decisions relative to the selection of skills have been based on a preparation for the most popular sport activities of our culture, which tend to be team and international competitive sports. The national standards are inclusive of both traditional sports (team and competitive sports) and physical activities that are normally not competitive (backpacking, rock climbing, bicycling) and encourage the development of skills in a broad range of different kind of activities. POSITION 3: Use motor skill content for different educational goals Advocates of using physical activity and motor skill content for different educational goals do not being their search for appropriate curriculum with questions on how to develop a physically active lifestyle. Rather, these educators choose to use the content of physical education to accomplish other goals. Sometimes these cross curricular approaches take content from each subject area and integrate them. At the elementary school level it is not uncommon for teachers to develop motor content for the primary purpose of either teaching or enhancing academic content (e.g., reading, math). At all school levels some programs are focused not on developing a physically active lifestyle, but on engaging students in learning experiences that involve physical activities that primarily contribute to the personal development of students (e.g., social or emotional development) or cognitive development of students (e.g., learning how to learn). While it is possible and even desirable to integrate these other ideas into a program that is primarily focused on developing physical activity, what a curriculum designer identifies as a major focus around which a curriculum is constructed is important. While many other goals are shared by other content areas in a school program, physical education programs have a unique responsibility for developing a physically active lifestyle. Programs that choose to use class instructional time to develop other goals and not those unique to physical education do students a disservice. From Designing the Physical Education Curriculum, Judith E. Rink
The games can be changed by:
EQUIPMENT:
SAFETY:
GAMES: TIC-TAC-TOE I enjoy promoting exercise in fun creative ways in the gym. Anything that has the kids physically moving plus mentally thinking is plus . The best way to incorporate lots of physical activity is making it fun for them. Bringing funny and traditional children's games is a way to incorporate funny ways to move and also to work your brain as you exercise your body. Tic-Tac-Toe is a game that involves short vigorous activity along with thinking skills. Equipment Needed:
The game will be played 3 versus 3. Each student will have 1 placement marker (scarf). On go, the first person from each team will run down to the tic tac toe board and place their marker in one of the hula hoops. After they place the marker, they will race back to their line to high five the next student in line. The next student will then place their marker in an open hoop. The goal is to have your team get 3 in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally). If all 3 markers have been played and there is no tic tac toe, the next student in line will run down and move one of their own team markers into an open hula hoop. The next team in line will stand behind the hula hoops and judge the game. After the game is over, the winning team will stay and play again. The judging team will come on to challenge, and the next 3 in line will judge the next game. The game will continue to cycle through. You can have multiple games going at a time!
This traditional Chinese game is great fun for the playground. You will need at least a group of 3 students. The students all form a line with their hands on the shoulders of the child in front (although there are other variations). The first in line is the dragon's head, the last in line is the dragon's tail. The dragon's head then tries to catch the tail by manoeuvring the line around so that he can tag the last student. All the students in the middle do their best to hinder the dragon's head. Don't let the line break! When the head catches the tail, the tail student takes the front position and becomes the new dragon's head. All the other students move back one position. This game can also be played just like the traditional tag game "Tails"; by having the last student in the line tucking a bib under their shorts (the tail). In this case, divide the class into teams of six to eight or so. Have the students to form a dragon by hanging on to the waist of the person in front of them. The last person of the dragon, or tail, is given a bib to hang out of the back of his pants. The object of the game is for the head to catch the tail and pull the bib from that player. If he succeeds he will become the new tail. The old tail does not become the new head, he stays in his same order. This game can be given a time limit in case a player is having trouble catching the tail. Here's a jump rope unit for students in grade 3-6. TEACHING SUGGESTIONS:
JUMP - ROPE SKILLS
OTHER SKILLS:
The most basic element of choreography is the structure - that is, the notion that sequences have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning and end are shapes that are held still. With younger children, sequences are short. For example, a sequence for younger children might be to start in a curled shape (beginning); then gallop and leap (middle); and finally end in a curled shape (end). With older children, sequences are longer with more complex elements. Typically the teacher sets the order of sequence components, identifies skills and movement concepts students need to include in their sequence, or specifies the number of skills or movement components in the sequence. The following tasks to design a sequence are examples of how teachers can specify sequence components.
- The sequence is missing a beginning or an ending shape held still. - The sequence is missing parts of the middle that were assigned by the teacher as required components of the sequence. - Children create a never-ending sequence. Although designing sequences structured with a beginning, middle, and end seems like an easy element to teach, children need teacher's guidance in applying this element to their sequences. One way to teach this is the "I, We, You" method. With this method; first, the teacher (i.e. "I") designs a sequence and teaches it to the children, illustrating the beginning, middle and end segments. Second, the teacher and children together design a sequence (i.e. "we"), You can do this in several ways. For example, you might design and teach the children a sequence and have the children change one part. Alternatively, you might design a sequence and offer children a limited number of choices for each segment. For example, you might say, "Start in a balance on one leg; you can position your free leg any way you want. Then smoothly and gently take your weight down to the mat, and do two sideways rolls across your mat, showing two different leg shapes. End in a shape on the mat kneeling on one or both shins." Having learned a sequence designed by the teacher and having designed one with the teacher, the children are now ready to design their own sequence (i.e. "You"). The teacher assigns a simple sequence task for the children, and the children design their sequence. TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR INTRODUCING SEQUENCES 1) I, WE, YOU - Teacher designs and creates a sequence; - Teacher and children design a sequence together; - Child designs a sequence. 2) I list the actions; you create the variations: Teacher presents a list of actions, such as the following: - Beginning shape at low level - Big jump - Locomotor skill - Turn and sink - Ending shape at low level Child adds variations, shapes, and gestures. 3) I do half; you do half - Teacher creates the first half of the sequence - Child creates the second half of the sequence 4) I teach the steps; you add the formations and pathways Teacher designs steps of the dance to music. For example: - Four steps forward, four steps backward (repeat three times) - Eight slides left, eight slides right - Seven steps in a circle, turn and sink Children in groups of three add the formations, gestures and pathways. Taken from Elementary Physical Education: Curriculum and Instruction (2nd Ed.), Rovegno, I., Bandhauer, D. |
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February 2021
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