February:

At the beginning of February I started the 5^th grade fitness test. The fifth graders are being supportive of each other and helping other with parts of the test. We want to try to finish it as fast as possible so we can get to our other games.

We finished our foundational unit with using scooter boards. Scooter boards are a bunch of fun and difficult. Students had to maneuver the scooter board and pick up beanbags in a game called Hungry Hippos. The older kids also played a game called Battleship. (picture down below) Students had to stand on a mat, which was their ship and they had to stay on that mat and share it with their teammates. This was difficult for some. They had to be aware of the mat and others. On the mat they had to guards 4 cones that were keeping the battle ship afloat. While they were doing all this they also had to throw balls at other ships cones and try to sink their ship. Then there was also a person from each team that was responsible for using a scooter board and collecting balls for their team. I loved this game because students had to work together and use a bunch of different skills at once. It was hard but awesome.

All these scooter board activities are wonderful for foundational skills. Being able to move on a scooter board, using your strength, agility and being able to balance on the board while moving are all tricky skills.

Our next two-week unit is using our feet to control an object. We started off with trying to juggle a beach ball using our feet and with the help of our hands. Foot eye coordination is tricky but kids love beach balls so it was a fun skill to work on.

We then played crab soccer. I split the class into four team and we sit in a square where each team is on the side of the square. Everyone has to be in the crab formation and try to kick the ball over another team’s side. If the ball goes over your team’s side you get a point. In this game we don’t want points (I reminded them it is a little like golf). We loved playing this game, I loved it too because if there was an odd number of students then I was able to play as well.

We are also working on Soccer ball virus tag. This is where we start off with one or two people “it” and they have to kick a foam ball and try to hit people from the knee down. If you are hit with a ball then you become “it” as well. The game goes on until everyone has become “it”. Then we reset the game and play another round. I like this game a lot because students learn quickly that to hit a students legs they have to kick the ball in front of the students so when they are running they will get hit with the ball. This is skill used in soccer; you kick the ball to where a person is going to be not where they are right now.

I am also testing out some soccer type games where everyone gets to participate and work on their kicking skills. I am hoping at the end of this unit I have a bunch of different games to add to my kicking unit.

January:

We started off January with a new game I found and was super excited to play. Students learned to play Star Wars Tag. It was awesome! I am always afraid when trying out new games; sometimes they are amazing sometimes they go horrible.

In star wars tag students were split up into four teams and each team had a different colored light saber (really a half of a pool noodle) and they have to try to tag other teams from the knee down. If students are tagged they sit down and hold their light saber up in the air. Someone from their team would have to come by and recharge their teammates light saber to get them back in the game. The older kids played where they could eliminate a team, the other classes played continuously.

I think students could have played this game for the entire PE class. They didn’t want to stop but they eventually got tired and from running around so much. Students were so worn out and sweaty after this activity. I would play with the students and on average I ran more than half a mile (tracked it on my Fitbit) during a round of this game.

I then spent the next two weeks teaching hockey. I love hockey, I grew up playing street hockey and still love it. Hockey is a hard skill to teach, to have 25 students running around with sticks is a little dangerous. Students understand the dangerous parts of hockey and we were able to have some fun playing. I hope to do more hockey later when we can be outside on the blacktop and be able to spread out and play some mini games.

After we spent two weeks learning hockey my plan was to move into foundational skills unit, but the rain changed this plan. We had a straight week of rain and the big gym wasn’t available and the small gym was being used as well. I call this the perfect storm, when no gyms are available and it’s raining then I have to travel between classrooms. In these situations I have to teach in the classroom. I actually enjoy teaching in the classrooms it is a change of pace and it can be very fun. Since I had to be in the classrooms I taught juggling. We practiced juggling scarves and students could try juggling balls. We also balanced peacock feathers, which the students love and it takes a good amount of concentration. We were also able to play some interesting games that don’t take up too much room.

After the week of rain we were able to get back to our regular units. We started back with foundational skills. We did worked on our jump roping skills. I taught the students an interesting jump rope trick, which involve two or more people and a jump rope for each person. The trick is you have to work together to turn each other’s ropes. It is tricky. It's called the partner jump train (drawing down below) and it can be done with more than two people. A fourth grade class was able to do a chain of 8 people and they jumped 5 times.

I also taught the students a new game called gotcha. Each student wears a flag (it’s a single flag football flag) students have to run around and try to pull other peoples flag. When they pull someone’s flag they have to say “gotcha”. Then the student puts the flag back on and keeps going. This is a good foundational skills game because students are running around and have to guard their own flag while trying to grab other people’s flags. It is difficult and it takes a lot of brainpower to do all three things at once.

On a little side note at the end of January I went to a daylong PE training. It was amazing. I met PE teachers from all over the Bay Area and we learned a bunch of new games. I am excited to teach my students all the new games I learned. I love doing these training and don’t mind giving up a Saturday to attend.

December:

For the month of December we are working on our basketball skills. We are spending a good amount of time on dribbling skills. Students work on different dribbling techniques and I stress the importance of being able to dribble with your dominant and non-dominant hand. We then work on some dribbling games, which include protecting the ball and trying to steal balls away from other players. We will then be practicing some passing and shooting skills. To practice shooting skills I hang hula-hoops from the basketball hoops so students can practice shooting through the hoops and eventually reach the basket (picture below text). Some classes will be playing basketball games but they are a little different from your normal basketball game. I like games that include basketball skills but we might change the rules a bit to include everybody.

The last two weeks of December we will be reviewing past skills and games. There are some classes where I will be working on some more skills, other classes might be working on skills or games they missed or I might test out some new games with some classes to play in the New Year.

November:

For November we worked on our catching and throwing units. But before we got to that we had to do a week of Halloween themed games. We played some zombie tag, Ghostbusters and thriller dance.

I love catching and throwing games. We practiced catching and throwing yarn balls, gator balls and beanbags. When working on catching and throwing we worked on throwing with our dominant and non-dominant hand, catching with one and two hands, partner throwing and throwing for distance.

We played some amazing throwing and catching games. My new favorite was beanbag tag. Students had to slide the beanbags across the floor and aim for people’s feet. Students loved this and it was difficult to hit a moving target.

Another catching and throwing games that the students love is Hula huts. (picture of hula hut down below text) They have to throw a yarn ball and hit a hula hut. This is an anti dodge ball game, what this means is you throw at a target instead of people. I love these games because students need to work together with their team to think of their strategy to do well in this game. Students could play this game for hours and they leave PE all sweaty and tired.

We also did a very interesting relay race; I got the idea from the water bottle flipping challenge. Student had to run to the end of the basketball court and flip four cones before the next person on their team could go. The Team who finished first won. It was great, we had so much fun and students got really good at flipping cones and cheering for their classmates. (picture of cone flipping below)

October:

In October at the beginning of the month we finished up our teamwork unit. I bought a new piece of equipment that is amazing. I am sure you heard about it from your children. I bought an Omnikin ball; (picture below text) it is a ball that is an enormous balloon with a cover on it. The ball I bought stands at 4 feet tall, this company makes larger and smaller ones as well. I was so excited about it; the kids were really excited about it too. When they walked into the gym and saw this ball the look on their faces was amazing. It also spread around the school very quickly about this ball.

Then we moved into our foundational skills weeks. We spent some time working on hula hooping, jump rope, Chinese jump rope and the older students worked on long jump ropes. I love jump roping and I think it is wonderful exercise. We practiced our jump roping and then we made up our own jump roping tricks. The students came up with some amazing tricks, like jumping on one foot, backwards, skipping, I even had some students jump rope a mile around the track. We also spent a good amount of time Chinese jump roping. We started to develop some new jump roping routines.

In our foundational skills weeks we also worked on our hand eye coordination. I remember when I was at Oak Knoll we had Spin jammers I absolutely loved them. I knew I had to bring them back on the knoll. Spin Jammers look like Frisbees but have a cone in the middle (picture below text). You spin the spin Jammer on your finger and can do some awesome tricks. For the younger students we practiced just spinning them. With the older kids we worked on advanced tricks. The students just love them and I loved seeing the joy on their faces doing this activity, it was exactly how I felt.

During these weeks I did go over the fifth grade fitness test with students. We did a quick pretest. Every student had to do a mile. For the pretest they had to choose if they would like to run or walk, for the actual test they will all have to run the mile. We also worked on curl ups, arm hang, sit and reach, truck lift and shoulder stretch. After our pretest students now have a better understanding of the test. Our testing window for this test opens in February and closes at the end of March. For this test students will have as many chances as they want to pass each section of test.

September:

We started school reviewing the rules and routines of PE. My rules are very simple:

· Play hard: I tell students they should always try their best which could be different than other students best. If they are trying their best it makes me happy. Also students have to be willing to try new things. I tell students they do not have to love everything we do but we also have to try them and they could be surprised.

· Play safe: I tell students they should come to PE ready to run and move. This means they should be wearing shoes they can move in. I tell students that we always need to use our equipment in safe ways because we don’t want to hurt the equipment, hurt ourselves or other students.

· Play fair: Students should always be a good sport in PE. We work on being a good sport to ourselves and to others. I tell students we are all different with different set of skills and we need to respect each other.

We then worked on what I call Instant activities. These are activities that students know all the rules to and when they walk into PE I can quickly tell them what we are doing and they can get started. These activities are tag type games that will quickly get students heart rates up and get them moving and sweating. Some of these activities include fainting goat tag, line tag, high five tag, beanbag freeze tag, scrambled eggs and many more. I probably have at least 10 instant activities and introduce more throughout the year.

At the end of September we started our teamwork unit. I really focus on this at the beginning of the year. We spend several weeks working on teamwork and cooperation. We did activities in pairs, small groups, half class and whole class. We talked about how to communicate with our teammates and used games to work on these skills.

To work on teamwork I play games where students have to communicate and work together to do well. Students loved a game called Hunter Hawks. This game really had to do with communication. Students would all be standing in a hula-hoop and will have to try to switch hula-hoops with someone. At first I told them they could talk to the person they were going to switch with. Then they couldn’t talk and have to give signals to the person. We practiced this and we would see how many hula-hoops we could switch to in a minute. Then we added in the Hunter hawks. These were students who did not have a hoop and had to try to steal other student’s hoops. Students learned to communicate without alerting the hunter hawks. If they didn’t communicate well the hunter hawk would steal their hoop and that student would then become a hunter hawk.

With the older students we also played a game called Yoshi. This was a game I divided the class in half. The goal of this game was to get their whole team to the base on the other side of the gym, while also stopping the other team from doing the same thing. To win this game students had to communicate, think of a strategy, help each other and really work as a team. I had one team in a class win this game in 3 minutes. Their teamwork was amazing. This is going to be a game we will play a couple more times throughout the year.