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.

Create a Game Unit 2017 (version II)

Create a Game Unit 2017 (version II)

Having first developed this unit last year, this year I was able to develop it to make it more streamlined. This is a fantastic unit and it's got even better...

Last Years Blog Entries:
G5/G4 Create and Develop a Simple Game pt. 1
G5/G4 Create and Develop a Simple Game pt. 2

Tuning in... Simple Tag Type Games

This year I'd put together a handful of visuals to help the students achieve their goals.
The tuning in part of the unit was having the peer groups work together in order to develop a tag game using simple guidelines.

Team Name

BUT first things first, once the class had chosen their peer groups their first piece of collaboration was going to be to come up with an original team name! I found this an excellent way to slowly get the groups collaborating, with each exercise being a step up in their cooperation/collaboration, from deciding a team name, through to developing a complex game. The steps this year I felt worked well: (1) Agree upon a team name, (2) simple tag games following criteria (see below) and finally (3) developing an original (relatively) complex game.

Types of Tag Games

Below is a screenshot of the document I gave the classes. I took the descriptions from Peter Hastie's (2010) book Student Designed Games. Over the next two lessons the students would come up with  tag games that would fit into the four categories below.

This is a great way to tune in, but on reflection, next year I would bullet point the descriptions rather than have them in a paragraph. Just to make it easier for the students to access the information at a glance.

Lesson Order

Having done this unit last year, the lessons follow a pattern. It keeps the unit on time, which is key as you don't want all the students enthusiasm to go stale with a unit that never ends. 

The order goes something like this:

Lesson 01: Tuning in - Choose a Team Name and Design a Simple Tag Game (Anyone Can Freeze).

Lesson 02: Tuning in - Design Simple Tag Games ( Safe Players Can Unfreeze, Multiple-Option Taggers and/or Safe Zones).

Lesson 03: Designing & Playing the Game.

Lesson 04: Designing & Playing the Game.

Lesson 05: Trialing the Game & Receiving Feedback.

Lesson 06: Recording the Rules and Documenting the Complete Game.

Lesson 07: Share the Finished Game with the Whole Class.

Lesson 08: Share the Finished Game with the Whole Class.

Reflection.

Tuning in

The Grade 5 are starting a unit called "Create your own Game". This unit fits under the "relationships" learning journey in Physical Education. In the short video the students have been given simple guidelines in order to create a simple tag game.

For the Movie Click Here

Lessons 3 & 4

Lessons 3 & 4 of the unit have seen the students coming to an agreement of the type of game they are going to create. The lessons have given the groups the opportunity to use the equipment and to trial various ideas. The development criteria they are working towards is based on whether the game is original, fun, has longevity and is appropriately challenging. Next lesson they are going to introduce their game to another group, in order to get feedback and polish their final version.

For the Movie Click Here

Lessons 5 & 6

Lessons 5 & 6 had the students trial their games with another group in order to get feedback on how their game is developing. Once the game had been trialled the group had the opportunity to document their games objectives, set up and rules.

For the Movie Click Here

Additional Documents 

I created a couple of other documents designed to help remind the students the stages they needed to go through in order to design a game. All these need tweaking for next year, after reflection they could definitely be upgraded, but they served their purpose in helping guide the students thinking in the right direction.

Equipment F1 Racing

I thought I'd share this game/lesson with you. I learnt it at university many years ago, but have used it all round the world.

It's basically an equipment race. I believe my university lecturer likened it to a formula 1 race. The idea being you start with too much equipment and over the course of a number of trials you slim your equipment down into a fast oiled machine; you're basically starting with a bus and ending with a F1 racing car. In addition whilst you are trialing your machine, your group is developing into a tight team of experts, taking on roles to make the machine move as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I would divide a class of 20 students into 4 groups of 5. The equipment could be anything, but this time I went for 3 gymnastics mats, 3 poly spots and a hula hoop.

The objective being they race down the gym without touching the floor. If they touch they all have to sit and give themselves a slow count of 10 seconds. For the trials I let the students referee themselves with the warning that if they cheat and don't sit for a count of 10, I'll put them back to the beginning again :). In addition I make it clear that they can not leave equipment behind - everything has to be carried with them.

I usually have them start on the folded gym mats pushed up against the wall, and tell them they have to finish mirror imaged on the other side, again mats pushed up against the wall.

Once they have gone once, I announce that they can now get into discussions with their team and decide if they need to get rid of any unwanted equipment.

Again we race. Again I give them the opportunity to get rid of any equipment or do they think they need any back?

We have trials a total of 3 times, where students gradually trim down their equipment and develop their roles and team work skills.

Finally we're at the championship race, where hopefully they've become experts in getting their now super slimmed down equipment across the gym.

I now take back control of the penalty 10 second count, just to make sure the final isn't filled with controversy.

I believe this is a great lesson that develops team work, critical thinking, problem solving, discussion, negotiation etc. etc. as well as giving them a great upper body workout :)

Of course the whole distance could be done with just 2 mats, but the students rarely see it like that!

PS. I love this lesson because over the course of the trials it's the team that comes last or close to last each time wins the championship! They are the team that experiments most with their equipment - it's brilliant :)

10 second penalty count

Introduction to Orienteering

Introducing simple maps and map readings to the Grade 3's.
The first to lessons of the unit have been based in or around the gym.

Lesson 1 - Micro Orienteering in the Gym

The objective of this lesson is to use a simple map in regards to orientating themselves to the room. I start the lesson with a map drawn on the wall. I ask the obvious question of what are they looking at? Once I get an answer I ask them how they knew they were looking at a map of the gym? This leads us into talking about what clues gave it away? what a 'plan' is and what the symbols on the map indicate.

We have a number of basketball hoops in the gym and so I point to one on the map and ask them to point to the one I am indicating in the gym. We discuss North, South, East and West (they have covered this in class) and why it's important to have a North arrow on the map. We also talk about how to hold the map and to always keep it orientated to themselves and the room.

My simple map!

Before the lesson I hid 33 sticker in the gym and marked their location on two maps, one master map with location and codes and one map with just the locations. I photocopied the map with just the locations, which were handed out pairs of students.

One of the 33 stickers hidden in the gym, coded D1

We discuss what the students are looking for and that once a sticker is spotted they should not draw attention to it.

Then once they have the code in the case above 'D1' they should check back with me as a control to make sure the right circle on the map ties up with the correct code. It's at this point I discover if they are reading their map correctly. If they get the first couple correct I tell them to check in with me every 4-5 stickers that they find. They write the code on their map.

This lesson is very active and keeps the students engrossed and on task. I also did this lesson with the Grade 2's and they loved it! I called it 'Treasure Hunting'

Lesson 2 - Lollypop Stick Orienteering

With this lesson the students have a slate a whiteboard marker and a lollypop stick each. Again they partner up. The idea is they draw their own personal design on the lollypop stick, hand it to their partner (swap sticks) and they take it in turns to go hide their partners stick. I put a max time of 1 minute for them to hide their partners stick and state the boundaries for the hiding locations (I don't want them disappearing across the school). Once they have returned they start to draw a map on their slate that will lead their partner to their missing stick.

I have the partners share a yoga mat to ensure they meet up in the same location each time.

Once the sticks have been located they clean their slates and go again.

You'll be amazed at some of the maps your students will draw!!! Lol - just that alone will lead you/them into a wealth of inquiry.

Personalizing their stick!

Sprint Technique

Partner feedback card for developing body position, arm and leg action for the sprint.

Athletics pt.1: Running - exploring sprinting and middle distance running techniques

Athletics part 1 - exploring the track

How do we run for speed? and how do we run for distance?

Tuning in (speed)

Students will sprint the 100 meters and the 400 meters.
As a whole class we explorer the concept of running and speed, the discussion ranges from football to playing tag. Two areas of focus are identified, running and fitness and running technique.

The lesson starts with tag

Finding & Sorting out 

Focusing on technique the students agree that we can divide our bodies movement into three areas: body (including head), arms and legs.

On poster paper I quickly draw up a table consisting of three columns: Body Position, Arm Action and Leg Action. I put on a YouTube video showing highlights of the 100 meters sprint through the ages of the modern Olympics. The class focus on the three previous identified areas of body, arms and legs. Post it notes are available for the students to record any prior knowledge or observations and to post them on the poster paper in the specific column.

The great thing about YouTube is you can loop the video, so if the students move away

Once we have our observations we read through them taking 2-3 points per body part area; high knees, hands going from hip to lip etc.

After all that observation and note taking we all need to get moving. In order to practice our technique a partner gives feedback as the runner sprints on the spot - it a good way to start and it lets partners give feedback straight away, whilst the runner focuses on form.

At some point the issue of arm movement arises (even though students have observed big arm moments from the athletes, they don't immediately apply the lip to hip movement to their own running technique)  and so we experiment with different techniques, not all of them correct! For example we experiment with running without the use of our arms, or with low knees or small steps.

Eventually after some partner/group trial and error work we have a technique that doesn't look too dissimilar from our earlier observations.

The students now have a bit of a technique to work on.

The next step is to explorer the uniqueness of the sprint start and why we think sprinters start low to the ground etc. and what observations did the class make regarding the sprint finish...

As a class we practice our sprint starts together, and then we combine our starts and our newly developed running technique across 10-15 meters, remembering always to finish strong (we don't slow and then stamp our foot on the finish line!)

Going Further

2nd lesson and the class heads for the track with stopwatches in hand and a partner to give feedback in order to help develop overall technique (start, sprint technique & a strong finish).

In the 400m lesson we discuss the staggered start and the advantages or disadvantages of running in particular lanes.

Tuning in (distance)

Provocation: What is pace? As a class we used Think, Pair and Share - or in this case the students noted their discussions on a sheet of poster paper.

The majority of the students suggested that they already had an understanding of the concept... but could they put that understanding into practical use?

Playing with the concept of time and distance I set up a couple of small tasks to get everyone thinking about what is pace.

Finding Out
The first drill was the Centipede, where a small group of 4 run in a line passing a baton backwards. Once the baton reaches the back, the last run speeds up and goes to the front for the process to start all over again. The drill forces the students to run together and to pace themselves to the slowest runner. I originally used rubber chickens for this drill, but they proved too distracting for the students.

The second drill went from asking students to jog anywhere in the gym at a certain pace, but to return to me when they thought 30 seconds was over.  The drill was run a number of time using a variety of time differences e.g. 30, 45, 60, and 90 seconds.

I changed this second drill by having a set distance, which the students had to complete in given time eg. they have to run round a cone and be back at the start at 20, 30, 45 and 60 seconds.

I noted that during the centipede drill the students were so distracted with passing the baton back that they easily ran continuous for 7 minutes without complaining or groups stopping or slowing down. I chose 7 minutes as the goal as it is the average time last years Grade 5 ran the 1,500 meters in.

Sorting Out
The class returned to their partners from the beginning of the lesson and adjusted their understanding of pace on the poster paper and as a class we discussed any additional thoughts and discovery's about pacing ourselves and the idea of running for an extended period of time. 

Going Further

2nd lesson up to the track to experience the 1,500m and a waterfall start. The goal is to find a comfortable pace and to stick at it, leaving enough in the tank for a sprint finish.

Capture the Basketball(s) (Based on Capture the Flag type Games)

The previous unit of develop/create your own game(s) has really rubbed-off on me.

Again it's a well known game that my students adore: Capture the Flag, all I've done is basketball it up a bit!

I divide a basketball court in two (green team and yellow team).
I still keep the concept of 'raiding' going into the opponents territory to capture an item, but rather than capture a flag, they try and capture 3 basketballs.

The 3 basketballs are placed on cones and are spread along the baseline of the basketball court.

The object of the game is to take the basketball under control to your teams side. If you get tagged whilst raiding you become 'stuck in the mud' until a team mate can reach you and escort you back to your own half (during the rescue the students have to remain in contact - they get a free walk back). Once back in their own half they can continue raiding once again. If a raiding student is tagged whilst dribbling or holding the basketball, they have to give it up immediately so it can be returned to it's cone.

Under control means the basketball can't just be thrown across the center line. It maybe passed (before the center line) or dribbled, but as it goes across the center line it has to be dribbled under control! If the basketball is not dribbled under control it is returned to the original team for them to replace it on it's cone.

Safe zones: I add safety zones (circles) around the cones holding the basketballs. They are safety zones for the raiding team.  The safe zones can only accommodate one raider at a time, with a time limit of 10 seconds.

The winning team is the first team to capture their opponents 3 basketballs.

Adapting Games to Focus on Specific Skills

I experimented with adapting two games yesterday with Grades 4 & 5 to really focus on their Basketball dribbling, passing and receiving skills.

The first game was a game created by the Grade 4's in their previous unit. I've already shared their original game in an earlier post (G5 & G4 Games (For their "Create and Develop A Simple Game" unit)). 

In the gym four 'rest areas' are coned off - two at the far ends opposite each other and two at the sides in the middle, again opposite each other. In each of the 'rest areas' I put a bucket of Basketballs. 

I start with one tagger with the idea that the first person he/she tags immediately becomes another tagger.

After that, everyone else who is tagged becomes frozen from the waist down.

To be released the frozen student needs to receive a bounce pass or chest pass from a fellow student in a 'rest area'.  Once they have caught the Basketball they dribble the ball back to the 'rest area' it was passed from. They then have to perform their 'run for freedom' across the gym to the opposite 'rest area' without stopping in order to continue the game. If they get tagged during their 'run for freedom' they immediately join the tagging team. 

The game continues until there are no runners left or the game slows because the taggers outnumber the runners.

I adapt the second round of the game... During their 'run for freedom' they have to dribble a Basketball - once they have completed their run successfully they put their Basketball in the bucket and join back in with the game.

The second game is an adaptation of Yoshi - a very popular game this year in PE. 

Same objective, the whole team needs to get 'home' without being tagged. This time though each player has to dribble a Basketball when moving (I don't worry, double dribbles etc.) 

Two players, one for each team are off the court on the side lines on the oppositions side. 

Their job is to help free the raiders if they get tagged whilst trying to get 'home'.

If a raider get tagged he/she is frozen from the waist down and has to pivot round to pass their ball to the team member off the court, on the side line. They then pass the ball back in to so the once frozen play can dribble the Basketball to halfway to have another go at entering enemy territory in order to get home.

When the teacher calls 'Yoshi' everyone rushes to get home. The two players who were on the sidelines grab a Basketball each and race across the gym to touch the opposite sideline then rush for home. First team 'home' wins.