International Walk to School Day postponed until Friday, Oct.11th.
Welcome to the Glen Stewart Primary School Physical Education blog! Over the course of the year our blog will help keep you updated on special events; the themes and units that we will be teaching, the intramural recreation program and other important information. We ensure you that we will keep this site updated and current.
For information on physical education requirements, special events, and other important information check out the drop down menu on the top right of the page for a quick link to this information.
Our first unit will focus on readiness, routines, movement awareness and locomotor movement skills. The development of fundamental movement skills are critical in establishing the foundation for participation in many sports and physical activities. A child who has not had the opportunity to develop these basic motor skills experiences difficulties or barriers when participating in sport experiences or later school-based programs that involve more specialized skills.
For more information on the importance of developing fundamental movement schools as part of your child’s physical literacy journey please checkout the following sites: Active for Life , Physical and Health Education Canada , Canadian Sport for Life
We have just wrapped up our unit on Space and Body Awareness. Students during this unit learning was focused on identifying personal and general space; movement variables such as directions, pathways and levels; different actions such as twisting, bending, stretching and curling; and moving in relation to different objects or people. Students learned these concepts through a variety of movement exploration activities, obstacle courses, tagging games and low organized games.
Our next unit will focus primarily on fundamental travelling skills. These skills would include walking, running, skipping, galloping, side-stepping, hopping, leaping and jumping. Each of these skills build the foundation for participation in sport and other movement activities such as dance. Much the same way that literacy requires fundamental skills such as letter identification, phonics and knowledge of sight words in order to begin the process of reading, the same can be said of physical literacy. Students need a level of competence in the fore mentioned fundamental movement skills to be able to successfully participate in different movement activities. For example the skill of side-stepping is an important skill in many territorial or invasion games such as basketball. It is also a skill that my be found in dance or gymnastics. Although their are similarities or fundamentals in how side-stepping might be done in either of these activities there are also distinct differences. In basketball, the side step is done more like a shuffle with the feet remaining close to the ground and further apart. In dance it is often referred to as a chasse step where the feet would come together and there would be some flight in the air. By teaching students the fundamental way to perform side-stepping it can be then be more easily transferred and then specialized to any particular sport or movement activity. Another example of why it is important to learn these fundamentals is that they can be sequenced together to create more complex movement patterns. Lets take kicking a soccer ball. If you were to break down the skill into its parts you would see that there is a leaping action from one foot on the the other when the student approaches the ball. If a student has a grounding in leaping that they are going to find that it will be that much easier to kick a ball.
One of the reasons why children often leave sport and other movement activities early is that they either have not had the opportunity to develop these fundamental skills before being introduced to sport or those leading the sport introduce more complex skills before children are ready to learn them. Either way, the lack of competency that the child might have as a result could have a huge impact on a child's confidence and in return their desire to play.
Students will be introduced to these travelling skills in a variety ways. Students will be introduced to the travelling skills in movement exploration activities where they will move through space in different directions, pathways, levels and speeds. Students during the exploration activities will become more aware of how their body can and should move . They will discover how arm swing, stride length, foot pattern, body position, etc. is incorporated into each of the travelling skills.
Student will learn to apply the travelling skills in low-organized games or different tagging type games. I often ask the students what travelling skills they think they might use in a game of tag. Of course they answer with running. Which is of course not incorrect but it does not account for all the other skills that can and should be used. Once, students come more aware of all the different skills that can be used in a game of tag it becomes a completely different game.
Students will also be introduced to performance cue language. Performance cues helps student identify the important phases or parts of a movement skill. For example the performance cues for running that we might focus on would be eyes ahead, arms swing from ear to hip, arms work in opposition to legs and long strides. Again, this would be the fundamental way of performing the skill of running. Of course running technique would become more specialized if students where to later participate in sports such as distance running, sprinting, cross country running or soccer.
In Kindergarten, students would be expected to repeat teacher led cues before performing a skill. This would provide students the knowledge of how the skill should be done with a certain level of proficiency. It is, however, not expected that students in Kindergarten perform the skills with a high level of proficiency when executing the skill as they are usually still exploring how their body moves. When students acquire the knowledge of the cues of a particular skill it allows students the opportunity to receive feedback and begin to understand how the skill is performed. They in return will then start to incorporate these cues in their skill development
In grade 1 and 2 students are expected to repeat the performance cues while performing a particular skill. Consider it as "thinking out loud". This helps students do a self check to see if they are incorporating these cues into their skill performance. Students in these grades are also expected to start using the performance language when explaining how one might perform a travelling skill. For example, we often have students team up with one another as mini coaches. The expectation would be that they would use performance cue language to help their friends refine their skill.
There will also be some emphasis on the active living component of our curriculum in this unit.. Students will learn how often they need to be physically active to gain health and wellness benefits as well as what benefits these might be . Students will brainstorm a list of ways they can be physically active and the different environments they can be active in . Students will also discover who is truly responsible for their activity levels.
As we begin to be to incorporate more game into our lessons students will focus on good sporting behaviors. Students will focus on playing by the rules, respecting their classmates, excepting losing and being graceful winners. We also discuss ways to solve problems when students encounter conflict.
Finally we will continue to introduce to students different responsibilities. The responsibilities that we will focus include the referee responsibility (playing by the rules); good sporting behavior responsibility (respect for the game, self and others); and the friendship responsibility ( co-operating with others).
What's Happening in Physical Education
Students have just completed their unit on readiness, routines and responsibilities. In this unit students learned the importance of getting ready quickly and being prepared to learn in PE. They have been practicing a variety of routines and organization signals that will help them to accomplish this learning goal.
Students also focused on the responsibility of respect. There was particular emphasis on how to respectfully get a teachers attention by raising a hand. Students also practiced respecting the safety of one's self and others when moving in the gym. Student's helped establish the learning criteria for moving safely through the gym. Throughout the year students will be introduced to different personal and social responsibilities.
There was also an emphasis put on health related fitness. Students have been starting each class with an exercise circuit that focused on upper body, lower body and core strength. Students also learned what body parts are affected by fitness; why respiration and heart rate increases when exercising and how fitness contributes to our well being. There will be a continued emphasis on fitness throughout the year.
Students in all grades will now be focusing on space awareness. In this unit students will learn to both identify and move safely in both personal and general space. They will also learn to travel in space in different directions, pathways and at different levels. Students in kindergarten and Grade 1 will begin to learn how to sequence movements using these directions, pathways and levels. In grade 2 students will begin to create their own movement sequences and will share their creations with their classmates. Students will also learn to move in relationship to objects in the gym or to classmates. Obstacles courses will be set up where students will navigate the course by going over, under, through or around different objects in the gym. We will be teaching these concepts over the next couple of weeks.
Welcome to the Glen Stewart Primary School Physical Education blog! Over the course of the year our blog will help keep you updated on special events; the themes and units that we will be teaching, the intramural recreation program and other important information. We ensure you that we will keep this site updated and current.
For information on physical education requirements, special events, and other important information check the drop down menu on the top right of the page for a quick link to this information.
Our first unit will focus on readiness, routines, movement awareness and locomotor movement skills. The development of fundamental movement skills are critical in establishing the foundation for participation in many sports and physical activities. A child who has not had the opportunity to develop these basic motor skills experiences difficulties or barriers when participating in sport experiences or later school-based programs that involve more specialized skills.
For more information on the importance of developing fundamental movement schools as part of your child’s physical literacy journey please checkout the following sites: Active for Life , Physical and Health Education Canada , Canadian Sport for Life