Physical Education Learning Journeys & Key Concepts

Over the past 3 or 4 years my department in Jakarta has been working on developing an inquiry/concept based physical education matrix that fits over a preexisting national curriculum (Grades EY3-Grade 5).

The elusive PE matrix, it's something lots of people talk about, but very few people document.

With the knowledge that the Australian Curriculum (Health & Physical Education) underpins our conceptual matrix, here are our Learning Journeys and our Key Concepts.

If you have followed previous post, you will have noticed we have now gone from 5 Learning Journeys to 4, combining Relationships and Ethics together. The Learning Journeys are now: Relationships & Ethics, Elements or Movement, Health & Fitness and Evaluation & Critical Thinking. In addition we have tied each Learning Journey to their own set of concepts: Relationships, Safety, Values, Critical Thinking, Evaluation, Growth, Performance, Motivation and Wellness.

Some concepts do overlap Learning Journeys. When this happens we examine that particular concept through the lens of the Learning Journey we are studying at that moment in time.

Our Enduring Understandings (conceptual and transferable rather than topic based) and our Compelling Questions (provocation that captures the essence of the inquiry) will be discussed in the next post.

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.

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 8 (The Concept of Evaluation)

Links to previous posts on 'Developing a Conceptual Matrix...'

My original idea, Development Pt. 1, Development Pt. 2, Development Pt. 3, Development Pt. 4, Development Pt. 5, Development Pt. 6, Development Pt. 7

As Development Pt.7 for Ethics and Pt. 6 for Health & Fitness, the Evaluation Concept (Development Pt.8) has been referenced to the New Australian Curriculum for Physical Education. Our conceptual curriculum Key Concepts, Enduring Understandings and Compelling Questions can be seen on the strand for each of the year groups.

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 7 (The Concept of Ethics)

Links to previous posts on 'Developing a Conceptual Matrix...'

My original idea, Development Pt. 1, Development Pt. 2, Development Pt. 3, Development Pt. 4, Development Pt. 5, Development Pt. 6

As 'Development Pt.6' for Health & Fitness, the Ethics Concept has been referenced to the New Australian Curriculum for Physical Education. Our conceptual curriculum Key Concepts, Enduring Understanding and Compelling Questions can be seen on the to strand for each of the year groups.

Fitness Testing in Primary Schools - YES or NO?

Fitness Testing in Primary Schools

I will now attempt to put an argument for not testing in primary PE... 

For myself, the word testing is enough to make me let out a little grown. For some students, when it's used in conjunction with the word fitness it's enough to make them limp off to the nurse, or in some cases have sleepless nights. Now this definitely isn't all students, as you will always have a handful of athletes willing to compete who just love the tests. But I'm guessing they are the handful of students that excel at fitness testing.

Fitness testing does have a time and a place, I'm just not sure it should be done during primary school PE lessons. Don't we preach that play and inquiry are key to the development of the child and yet we make them sit through tests that were originally designed for adults and are incredibly prescriptive?

But, you do the test. You record the students heights and weights and you put them through a series of designer challenges in order to collect data. Why? So you can let the overweight or unfit child know they are overweight or unfit? I'm kinda guessing that the child already knows, and doesn't need a beautiful printout stating the obvious.

 

What's Just Happened

Personally, as a professional physical education teacher I think I can recognise if my students need to improve their fitness or lose weight. Hopefully I can target these issues by promoting a healthy active lifestyle, and by making the most of the time I have within PE. Additionally, you always have to keep in mind that there's a good chance that over the next couple of years as students grow their body types change. The slightly overweight child in grade 5 could become the class athlete by grade 7 or 8. Particularly if you've given them a love for being active and staying healthy!

 

Missing Our Primary Audience

I think we're missing our audience by fitness testing in primary school.

The top athletes love the multi stage fitness test because they do well in it! But they are not the students we want or need to get up and running, because they are already internally motivated.

Our target audience are the ones that don't do particularly well in the tests, the ones that need help in getting motivated, and/or are too shy about being tested in front of their peers.

I have to argue that if fitness testing is the way we are introducing a love for life long fitness into primary schools, we are doing the majority of our students a disservice.

Instead we should be promoting the understanding that fitness and exercise are fun! As PE educators we talk about how we should be developing a love for exercise, games and sports that should be with students a lifetime.

Case in point, when I was at university we worked closely with Great Ormond Street Hospital, helping medically obese children. Our number one priority was to get them back to enjoying being active: playing tag, capture the flag etc, not sticking them through boring fitness tests that already told us what we already knew.

I could go on about fitness testing in primary schools, and I certainly could play devils advocate. 

My belief as a PE specialist is that we need to introduce healthy life style concepts at an early age.  We need to make fitness and exercise fun so they become positively integrated into students lifestyles. Then, as students grow and develop the introduction to more commercialized fitness tests, particularly when linked with sport makes more sense.

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 6 (The Concept of Health & Fitness)

The process of developing a conceptual matrix has been ongoing throughout this school year. Last PD day the PE teachers of PIE and PEL were able to get together to explorer what Enduring Understandings and Compelling Questions might look like for EY & Kindergarten through to Grade 5. All Enduring Understanding were crossed reference with the new Australian Curriculum for Physical Education (the chosen curriculum of JIS's Physical Education Programme from EY - Grade 12).

Previous posts cover some of how we got this far...
My original idea 
Development Pt. 1 
Development Pt. 2
Development Pt. 3
Development Pt. 4
Development Pt. 5

 The Concept of Health & Fitness in Primary Physical Education.