Create a Game Unit 2018 (version III)

My third year in the development of this unit.

Previous entries:
G5/4 create and develop a simple game pt. 1 (2016)
G5/4 create and develop a simple game pt. 2 (2016)
Create a games unit 2017 version II (2017)

Similar to my previous post on this unit, I'm not going to go over the fundamentals of the unit, just the changes I have made in order to make the unit run smoothly.

This year I kept drawing the class back to the units objective:
To create an original game that the whole class (approx 20 students) can play/get involved in.

and our Enduring Understandings for the Learning Journeys of Relationships & Ethics:
Participating positively, adopting various roles and responsibilities supports the development of a good team.
and
Good sportsmanship is essential to all activities.

Lesson Sequence
Lesson 1: Tuning in - Teacher lead games - 4 types of tag games.
Lesson 2: Tuning in - Team names and design a simple tag game from the 4 types of tag game sheet.
Lesson 3: Sorting out - Choosing a game type and starting to create.
Lesson 4: Creating a game.
Lesson 5: Creating a game and trailing the game.
Lesson 6: Feedback, game completion and 1st game + peer assessment.
Lesson 7: Games 2 & 3 played + peer assessment
Lesson 8: Game 4 + peer assessment and reflection

Tuning In - Team Names and Tag Games

Different from last year, this year I modelled the 4 types of tag game on the sheet below. Letting the student know that next lesson they would be presenting one of the types of tag games.

Again, the first task of the team was to come up with a team name that everyone agreed upon.
Next I kept the lesson similar to last years but instead of assigning types of tag games I let the students choose their games through luck/fate with a 4-way game of black & white and rock paper scissors.

Once the student teams have their assigned types of tag games I give them 5-10 minutes to create a simple tag game following the parameters on the sheet using minimal equipment.

After each game was played the other teams give a little vote on what they thought, marking out of 5 for originality (creativity) and 5 for fun.

Create A Game

As a way to help focus the teams I talked about types of games that they might want to create. Last year I used this document which included Health and Fitness games. I decided to lose the Health and Fitness type game this year.

https://www.iphys-ed.com

The students discuss the possible game type they would like to work on. Once the teams are in agreement they can start discussing layout, roles and equipment.

A change from last year; rather then giving them designated equipment, I gave them free rein with the advice of not to make the game so equipment intensive that it becomes painful to set up, takes 2 minutes to play and forever to put away.

Dispositions

This year I also had teams identify areas they found themselves doing well in and areas that they found challenging. This helped the students recognise and understand the process they were going through in order to reach their goals.

I did this through using the dispositions PE has identified as being strongly link to our subject area and particularly to this unit.

Trialling the Game

Trialling the game remained the same as the last couple of years. The difference this time was how and when the students gave feedback. Last year the teams delivered feedback whilst sitting in circles, this year the teams wrote down the feedback. The documented feedback was handed out next lesson. I gave the guidelines of approx 3 positives comments and 2 possible improvements.

Next lesson the groups received their feedback, had time for clarification questions and then time to complete their rules and finish (to a degree) their games, ready for the whole class to play.

The Game & Peer Assessment

It feels like this year I devoted more time to playing the games and the peer assessment.

The format is the same for each class. The group whose game everyone is about to play, sets up and then stands in front of the class to explain the rules and to answer any questions. Their peers are encouraged to ask clarifying questions and if necessary I quickly recap. Once the game has been played, we gather together in our teams and assess the game on originality and fun.

Assessment is achieved through group debate and a hand held star system: 1 - 5

With four groups per class the maximum a team can score is 15 stars for originality and 15 for fun (max 5 stars across 3 teams) making a total of 30 stars (points).

The Grade 5 & 4 Create A Game Score Board

Reflection

This year I wrote down 4 reflective questions for the students to walk around and answer.

1. How can you apply what you learned from the create a game unit in your life?
2. What advice would you give to someone else working on the create a game unit?
3. How have you been challenged during the create a game unit?
4. What did you learn through this experience and how can you use it in the future?

My Grade 4s found question 1 and 4 too similar. My personal favourite is question 2.

Enduring Understanding & Compelling Questions 2018/19

Colour Code
Yellow = Relationships
Red = Ethics
Blue = Elements of Movement
Green = Health & Fitness
Orange/Brown = Critical Thinking & Evaluation

This year I'm experimenting with focusing and aligning our 5 Learning Journeys (Relationships, Ethics, Elements of Movement, Health & Fitness and Critical Thinking & Evaluation) across Grades 1 to 5. Instead of addressing each Learning Journey depending on the games, topics or sports played, I'm focussing on letting the Enduring Understandings and Compelling Questions drive what we do in class.

Rereading our Enduring Understandings, recognising (and predicting alongside the Australian Curriculum) where the students would be with their learning and understanding, it seemed obvious that the Learning Journeys (LJ) could fall in an order that would be appropriate for a yearly overview.

Meaning, the LJs appear to fit nicely together, running from Relationships & Ethics combined, through Elements of Movement, Health & Fitness and finishing with Critical Thinking and Evaluations at the end of the year.

If you are aware of my previous physical education matrices you will notice I have combined the stands of relationships and ethics. Taking our 5 Learning Journeys down to 4 across a school year. I have done this for a number of reasons; the first of which is I believe the 2 strands run very closely together. Tackling the questions alongside one another gives us the opportunity to explorer both LJs for extended periods of time, allowing the classes the opportunities to make more meaningful connections. In addition our new 4 LJs fit neatly into our school calendar, giving each LJ focused time periods to be explored in more detail, rather than just hitting the LJs randomly over the course of the year.

Putting the Fun back into Fitness - The Nuts & Bolts of the Fitness Unit

If you've read previous posts you will already know that I don't particularly agree with fitness testing in Elementary School. (Link Here to Fitness Testing in Primary Schools - YES or NO?)

For Grade 5 we overlapped the Athletics Unit (an intro to Track & Field) with the Fitness Unit in order to introduce the students to a wide range of the components of fitness (health and skill).

For the lower Grades we focus six lessons (three cycles) on cherry picking the components of fitness that we feel appropriate for the specific age groups.

In this post I am not going to go into depth into the Athletics unit (Grade 5), but the events covered within that unit will help highlight where certain components of fitness fit across the two units.

Grade 5 Athletics (Intro. to Track & Field)

Athletics Unit 2018
Lesson 1: Into. to Sprinting
Lesson 2: Sprinting
Lesson 3: Intro. to Middle Distance 1500m
Lesson 4: Middle Distance 1500m
Lesson 5: Intro. to Long Jump
Lesson 6: Long Jump
Lesson 7: Intro. to High Jump
Lesson 8: High Jump
Lesson 9: Javelin

A constant theme throughout this unit are the components of fitness, particularly:
Health: cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance, strength and
Skills: agility, balance, coordination, reactions, rhythm, power and speed.

Added onto the Athletics Unit for the Grade 5s are the following lessons, which make up the Fitness Units for the younger Grade groups.

Fitness Unit 2018
Lesson 1: Intro. to three new bodyweight exercises through a tag game. Followed up by Fitness Prisoner Dodgeball.
Lesson 2: Intro. to three new bodyweight exercises through a tag game. Followed up by Fitness Prisoner Dodgeball.
Lesson 3: 'Old School' (warm up), one partner circuit. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 4: 'Old School' (warm up), one partner circuit. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 5: Interval training via a timed tag game. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.
Lesson 6: Interval training via a timed tag game. Followed by a Dodgeball game or Yoshi.

The breakdown of lessons 1 and 2 introduces 6 bodyweight exercises over the course of two lessons.  This is achieved by playing 'everyone is it' tag or the fast tag in the world. Each time someone is tagged they perform 5-6 repetitions of the exercise we are learning about. The game is repeated three times introducing the three exercises. A lot of emphasis is place on form and doing the exercise right.

The first three exercise were the Star jump, Mountain Climbers and the Burpee.

Each exercise was taped to a board so they could be stood up around the gym.

The second half of those lessons is devoted to a game the students really have a lot of fun playing. With prisoner dodgeball when the students are hit or if they get caught, they go to the side and perform one of the exercises introduced that lesson. Once they have completed the exercise they make their way to prison and the game continues.  Each time they head to the side to do an exercise they are advised to rotate through the three and if they get hit a fourth time they start back with their first exercise.

By the time the students get to lessons 3 and 4 they know their six new exercises really well. After an 'old school' warm up, as a class we run some shuttles, the students break in to pairs and make their way clockwise round the gym doing their new circuit. Rep. ranges for the easier exercises are 20 and for the harder exercises 10.

For the second half of the lesson we play a fun game of the students choice, usually dodgeball or Yoshi.

In lessons 5 and 6 we play a tag game as part of the fitness element of the unit. The tag game introduces interval training. I don't know what the tag game is called, but I will attempt to describe it below.

Interval Tag Game.
The game is divided into 10 rounds.
Each round is 30 seconds long or each round gets progressively longer by 3-5 seconds.
Mr. Weston starts off as the sole tagger, carrying 4 mini noodles.
In the first 30 seconds I have to tag 4 students.

Once round 1 is over, if the students have not been a tagger or have not been tagged they receive a lollypop stick e.g. if they have successfully evaded the taggers that round they get a lollypop stick.

After the first round, if the students do get tagged they have to surrender their all their lollypop sticks to the tagger. You can not get tagged back within that round.

After 10 rounds we have a quick show of hands regarding who has how many lolly sticks.

Another possible timing opportunity would be to pyramid the times e.g. start at 30 seconds, increase by 5secs until you get halfway through the rounds and then start decreasing the time back to 30 again.

Again the second half of the lesson is devoted to a popular student game, Dodgeball or Yoshi.

That's it for a rough nuts and bolts for elementary fitness.

Orienteering Revisited '18

This is a post that is based on the reflections on last years Orienteering unit and how I organised the unit this year.

Lesson Order:
1. Introduction to basic maps and map drawing (find your partners lolly pop stick)
2. Micro Orienteering
3. Marco Orienteering (Flags of the world pt. 1)
4. Marco Orienteering (Flags of the world pt. 2)
Future Lessons:
5 & 6. Clue based Orienteering

Last year I started with Micro Orienteering follow up with Map Drawing (Hunt the lolly stick) Orienteering. As you can see this year I reversed the two lessons.

Reasons for this were I felt the students need to get to understand the basics of map reading, and the Micro Orienteering lesson didn't really answer all their questions.

Having them look at maps first and then produce a simple map on a personal white board of the gym with bits of equipment scattered round it seemed the more logical path to take. The practical part of the lesson had the students draw a plan of the gym (plus equipment) and then in pairs one would hide their partners lolly stick, mark it on the map with a circle and then have them try and find it.
A link to how to play this game can be found here.

Once the students have kinda got their heads around the idea of drawing and looking at a plan of the gym the next lesson: Micro Orienteering is much more plain sailing. In this lesson the idea of orientating yourself to the map is really important. It should be noted here, to save time and to lay the course, I had to produce the map for the class and photocopy it accordingly. Alternatively, if I have the time I would let the students copy the map onto their own white boards and to mark on the circles... I'm guessing that would produce some interesting results (and maps!).
A link to how to play this game can be found here.

Lessons 3 and 4: Macro Orienteering is conducted in an area of the schools ground, including outside basketball courts, a covered play area, the cafeteria, the gym and the football field.

I made up 40 cards with 20 flags (each flag had a double). With one set of flags I gave a number and with their double I gave a letter e.g. The Flag of France, one card is S and the other is 72.
To add a bit of technology into the mix I had the cards made up as QR codes (our G3's have individual iPads).

Before the lesson I place 20 cards (10 flags) around the area mapped, each location marked with a circle.

The objective is for the students to work in pairs to locate, find and record each card found and to match up the flag codes.

This is repeated for the 4th lesson, but with a varied map and the other 10 flags.

Below is one of the maps and keys for the flags that I used this year.

In the future I would like to try as the final lesson a clue based orienteering course. I'm not 100% sure what it will look like, but I like the idea of getting the students critically thinking their way to the next clue etc.