Category: Elementary School

Within this category, essays and articles focus on effectively teaching children in the pre-school and elementary grades. It’s a great place to find teaching tips and get advice from experienced practitioners.

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Evaluating the School Year

The school year may be almost over and although you will certainly need a break from the noise, kids and administrative chores, hopefully you’ll find time to take stock of the year just finishing – how it was, what worked (and why), what needs changing (and why), and if you met your professional goals or need to set new ones. Among other things, this means figuring out why some classes were a joy to teach and why others less so! Why? And more importantly what can you do to improve next year?

Part of the reason some things did not go as well as you hoped might relate to facilities, equipment, time, or curriculum. But perhaps the explanation is related to something harder to clearly point to such as difficult relationship with some of your students? What might be called for is finding more effective ways to address the physical, social, and emotional needs of all of your students.

A good starting point is to remind yourself that all of your students are different. You undoubtedly have some great athletes, some creative thinkers, some social butterflies, some kids who comply with your directions because they’ve learned that moving is good for their health or because they like you, some who hate competition though they love to move, and some who show up because they have to and have no other motivation.

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NFL Network’s PE Teacher of the Year Wants to Become Obsolete!

That’s right, you read it correctly. I want to become obsolete – over and over and over again! Now let me explain myself. I teach in an elementary building that houses grades K-4. Our middle schools run from 5th to 8th grade and our High School holds grades 9-12. I want to present my material in such a way that when my students “graduate” from my building, they don’t need me anymore. I want them to know everything that they possibly should to be able to do but especially the following two things: First, I want them prepared to go into their summer vacation able to be physically active 10-year-old individuals. Second, I want to empower them to return to school in September armed with everything they need to be able to build on their skills and knowledge in our middle school physical education curriculum.
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I’ve realized I need to keep both the short term and long term in mind when I plan and teach my lessons. In the short term, I need to ask if I am teaching them the skills they’ll need to be able to enjoy being active on their own? I don’t want to create basketball players, soccer players or any other kind of “player.” Rather I want to teach my classes to enable my students to feel comfortable and enjoy using a basketball, soccer ball, or any other kind of equipment; either on their own, or with their friends. Have I taught them how to organize and play something that they made up themselves? Do they know how all of those skills I taught them can fit into something fun to do?

If I were to see one of my students at a playground over the summer with a ball, I’d hope to see them enjoying themselves using it. Maybe they are shooting baskets with their dad, or mom? Maybe they are bouncing the ball as high as they can and trying to catch it? Maybe they are seeing how far or how high they can kick it? If they don’t have anything with them, I hope I would see them creating something constructive and fun to do. Maybe climbing on a playground structure, or a nearby tree? Maybe having fun running and chasing each other? How about something like asking their mom if they can ride bikes together? What I hope I don’t see them doing is sitting still, all by themselves.

bike w parents

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What Three Coaches Taught Me About Teaching

Learning how to teach is an ongoing process. Often teachers receive formal training in pedagogical methods while attending an educational institution. They then continue to develop their teaching talents through a variety of methods, including discussion with teachers, resources on best practice (i.e. books, videos, websites), observation of teaching styles, and hands-on experience (Cassidy, Jones, & Potrac, 2016).

Pete Carroll

In the world of athletics, coaches are teachers. The playing field is the classroom for instruction, where coaches teach technical and tactical skills (Martens, 2012). Interestingly, the process of becoming a coach does not always provide much training on how to teach. Coaches are left to learn on the job, frequently through trial and error (Van Mullem & Van Mullem, 2014).

When I accepted my first college teaching position, the only knowledge I had about how to teach came from my own classroom experiences as a student and working as an assistant coach. Having to learn on the job, I began to grasp that many of the same principles I had been using as a coach applied in the classroom. I also began to appreciate some of the lessons about teaching I gleaned from working with great teachers of sport. In this essay, I’m going to share three lessons I learned from coaches on how to work with and teach students. They include: 1) caring, 2) being consistent, and 3) believing in people.

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Join PEPEPTalk in Supporting National Physical Education and Sport Week May 1-7

It’s time for all physical educators to celebrate National Physical Education and Sport Week, May 1-7th. This special week focuses on sharing, improving and celebrating the schools, classes, children and families that benefit daily from the work of America’s health and physical education teachers. Learn more about what teachers can do to help celebrate this week with their students here: http://www.shapeamerica.org/events/pesportweek/

At PEPEPTalk (pronounced PE Pep Talk) we believe it is important not only to celebrate the value of physical education classes and what more and more teachers are doing to succeed with SHAPE America’s 50 Million Strong commitment, but also to celebrate the hands that mold and the feet that guide this critically important work.

Health and physical education teachers play such a vital role in preparing today’s youth for healthy, productive, and happy future lives. At PEPTalk we are striving to validate, encourage and celebrate the work of our teachers. PEPEPTalk provides teachers with resources to help keep the teaching fire burning, and for those who need it a way to reignite the lost flame.

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Attend the 2016 National PE & School Sport Institute

Collective Intelligence is a term used to describe the shared intelligence of a group or organization “that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and even shared competitions of many individuals.” And that’s precisely what comes to my mind when I think about the 2016 National PE & School Sport Institute! What’s different though, is that unlike the win-lose scenarios we are witnessing in our current American political landscape, the National PE & School Sport Institute is a true “win-win” event for everyone.

Each summer for the past four years, together with several hundred physical education teaching colleagues and school sport coaches, I’ve felt fortunate to personally experience some exciting, motivating, and truly amazing professional presentations and conversations. And it’s been taking place in my state – North Carolina. This gathering – better known as the National PE & School Sport Institute, has become an annual summer trek for teachers and coaches from around the country who identify with the terms #PEGeeks or #PhysEd. In other words, Institute attendees are leaders among the growing breed of connected “physical education wizards” who are sharing and thriving on Facebook, Twitter, Voxer, and other forms of social media.

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What Exactly is 50 Million Strong by 2029?

(This essay was originally published on SHAPE America’s member Exchange [April, 2016] and is reprinted with permission.)

For much of the past year as SHAPE America president, I’ve written extensively about 50 Million Strong by 2029. Since announcing 50 Million Strong to great fanfare at last year’s national convention, SHAPE America board members and staff have made every effort to explain exactly what it is at state conferences, on Exchange, in news releases and social media, and elsewhere. Collectively, we’ve traveled thousands of miles, devoted hundreds of hours, and spoken countless times in an effort to mobilize the physical education and health education professions to support what is in reality a revolutionary change in what we do.

Clearly however, communicating exactly what this change means to others is not easy. In puzzling over the challenge, I was reminded of the party game in which guests try to guess a song title. You remember? Someone tries to tap out a well-known tune on a table. Despite “hearing” the tune clearly in one’s head it’s often impossible to get others to recognize it.

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Finding Our Superpowers

At my school we are having a SUPER year and I need to personally thank SHAPE America Past-President Dolly Lambdin for it. I had the pleasure of meeting Dolly at the Southern District Convention in 2015.

For several years I’ve been writing fictional stories to introduce physical education units and I showed Dolly the teacher resources I’ve created called Literature Enhanced Physical Education. Dolly suggested that I write a children’s book with Physical Education teachers as super heroes. Dolly rattled off all the wonderful things that PE teachers do for children. I was truly interested in the venture and flattered that she thought I could write this important story. The only problem was that I didn’t think I could do it! It wasn’t that I didn’t agree that PE teachers could be super heroes to children; I just wasn’t feeling much myself like a super hero.

(Source: https://sparketh.com/blog/creating-everyday-gives-you-superpowers)

Each year, I set goals for myself at the beginning of the year and reflect upon them at the end. For the last 3 years, I’ve had the same goal: To try to connect better with my students. At the end of each year, despite progress I always feel that I can do better. Like many other PE teachers across the country, we can have up to 70 students in the gym at one time. My focus over the years has always been to get children moving. I intermittently stop to teach skills, share knowledge and reinforce social norms, then get students moving again. But I struggle to connect with each child personally, and if I don’t make a personal connection I question, “Can I really ever become a super hero?” This year I was again going to try.

The first week of school, I explained to our 4th graders that the whole year would be dedicated to finding our super powers. We discussed how everyone has physical activities they enjoy and do well, as well as other activities that they are not so good at and need to practice. In physical education I was going to help them find their physical, social and cognitive super powers so that they could develop skills that would keep them healthy for the rest of their lives.

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