Young Athletes Coaches

Think about having students with and without intellectual disabilities serve in different leadership roles during Young Athletes or Unified PE time! 

At Elmwood Street Elementary School in Millbury, MA, they started a 3rd grade coaches program during their Young Athletes sport and play time for the K-1st grade students with and without disabilities. These classes would meet in the gym twice a week over a series of 8 weeks during specials time.

These 3rd grade students were identified by teachers as students who needed further support with social skill development through positive experience. They selected 10 students to serve in this role.

The 3rd grade students would help the teachers to set up activity stations in the gym, check-in classes that would rotate through, model the activities for their younger classmates at each station and helped to provide words of encouragement. 

After the classrooms rotated through the Young Athletes activities for several weeks during practices, they then participated in a final Unified Game Day celebration. Parents and additional classrooms were invited to the gym to cheer on the students who were able to demonstrate the skills they had been working on.

The 3rd grade coaches had the special opportunity at the end to present game day ribbons to their younger classmates and also led the reciting of the slogan Choose to Include in sign language.  We are proud to call Elmwood Street Elementary a Unified Champion School!