We had Amy Johnson, a Physical Education professor at Wartburg, as a guest speaker. We joined her in our wellness center and she talked to us about after reading strategies for incorporating literacy as well as other content areas into physical education. She explained that as teachers we can be creative and come up with games that relate to books that are being used in the classrooms. She also talked about how we as teachers should reach out and partner with P.E teachers to create collaborate and make connections between what the students are learning about in class and skills they can work on in P.E.
There were three specific books that Amy talked to us about as examples which she paired with an activity. She spoke about the The Rechareables by Tom Rath, The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Susan Stevens Crummel, and Sally Sore Loser by Frank J. Sileo.For The Rechareables, she talked to us about how she would discuss the difference between good and bad nutition with her students and where you get energy, which relates to the books message. The activity that was paired with this was a relay race to get either a positive energy card or a negative energy card. The goal was to fill your energy card with your group before the others. For The Great Fuzz Frenzy, amy talked about how she paired literacy with physical activity by playing a version of tag. The book has to do with prarie dogs loving the fuzz on tennis balls so much that eventually greed leads them to a scary encounter with an eagle. The tag game involves 4 "Eagles" in the middle of an area trying to tag the "prarie dogs" who try to get past them to get to the tennis balls on the other side. This game gets students active and also ties in literature. Finally, for Sally Sore Loser, Amy had us brain storm way that we could encourage good sportsmanship in our classroom content areas and P.E. Tying in both the book and games that we could think of that would encourage kindness and respect.
Having Amy come and talk to us was a great experience and it really opened my eyes to a content area that I do not get exposed to very often. It really made me think about after ways that I can collaborate with others in my future school distict to create better experiences for my students.