Category: Middle & High School

This category focuses on how to effectively teach middle school, junior high school, and high schoolers. Learn more about how best to connect with and instruct students who are transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and how to motivate them to be physically active and make healthy lifestyle choices.

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Making the Physical Education Environment Handicap Accessible

This article presents some of the main guidelines mandated by the Architecture Barrier Act 1968 (ABA) and American with Disabilities Act 1990 (ADA), as well as suggestions to make the physical education environment compliant with the laws. These laws work together to help ensure buildings are readily accessible and services are readily achievable.

Between 1968-2008 amendments were made to improve the law’s ability to meet the unique needs of people with disabilities. However, following the “letter of the law” and the “intent” of the law is not the same. Accessibility is more than ramps, parking spaces, and dimensions of restrooms. Accessibility also impacts equipment, playing fields, pathways, programs, and polices that all contribute to the environment promoting equal access. We encourage all physical educators to go beyond what is legally required and make real changes that allow all students with disabilities full access and enjoyment in physical education.

When thinking about accessibility it’s important ask yourself, “Can a student who uses a wheelchair, access and participate in the activity?” If a students who uses a wheelchair either manual or battery powered can participate successfully, then the environment should be appropriate for all levels of disability. However, if the answer is “No,” then your program or services are not readily achievable and accessible to all.

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Rethinking Physical Education Programs with Common Core State Standards in Mind

More and more states are adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) while the student population, in the United States, is rapidly becoming more diverse. The CCSS aim to prepare students for College and Career Readiness (CCR). As the new direction of today’s educational reform, CCR is defined as the preparation of high school graduates to enter college courses and/or workforce-training programs (Mills, 2012) successfully. The CCSS intend to set consistent expectations for all students across states. Individual districts or schools however, are still responsible for designing content, instructional strategies and assessments in order to meet these expectations.

Literacy and mathematical skills are a primary focus of the CCSS and technical subjects -physical education and art – are expected to support and promote such skills. Thus, the CCSS evoke the need for a more cross-disciplinary educational approach requiring more explicit instructions regarding reading, writing, speaking, listening as well as critical thinking and problem solving skills, by all educators. In other words, infusing the above components into physical education programs is no longer a choice but rather a requirement.

Commonly, most high-quality physical education programs do provide opportunities for students to develop motor, cognitive and social skills (Sibley & Etnier 2003; Etnier et al., 1997) along with problem solving, collaboration and communication skills. The expectation implicit in CCSS however, of physical education promoting and supporting mathematics and literacy, puts a greater challenge upon PE programs. Already many physical educators are battling to keep larger size classes of students appropriately engaged in health-enhancing levels of physical activity.

This article points out how a high-quality physical education programs could -if it is not doing so already – promote and support CCR and meet CCSS. With the implementation of commonly used methods and approaches, and the willingness to re-think physical education programs with a multidisciplinary lens, the CCSS could be an attainable challenge.

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Addressing the Activity Gap

Most teachers I know are always looking for ways to improve their practice so they can better serve their students. We strive to develop more effective assessments, more engaging lessons, better classroom management techniques, stronger interpersonal relationships, the list goes on endlessly.

When I reflect on my own teaching and try to answer the question “How can I better serve my students?” I find myself challenged with a related question, “Where should I strive to have most impact?” Should it be in the gym and on the fields, or on the streets and in the yards?

I have always been a firm believer that a strong physical education program (among many things) serves as the foundation for a healthy life, but wonder whether my teaching reflects this. It is easy to say that PE can provide the foundation for healthy living, it is even cliché to a degree, but I still wonder, “Am I truly teaching all of my students how to do it?”

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Healthy Hearts Lead to 50 Million Strong Kids!

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

February is Heart Month. Time again for America’s physical educators and health educators to celebrate the value of what we do best: keeping kids healthy.  In our increasingly sedentary and fast-food-focused world, cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. It’s estimated close to 1 million lives are lost annually, which represents about one of every 2.5 US deaths. None of us remain untouched.

Because many of these deaths are the result of poor lifestyle choices they are often preventable. Inactivity, poor nutrition and tobacco use are chief among the causes, which makes the work of health and physical educators top among the solutions.

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Turner Ashby High School Dream Trail

The end of 2014 was the beginning of an incredible professional journey for me. It launched the building of a dream that had been brewing inside of me since the day I walked into my first teaching assignment during the summer of 1997 at Turner Ashby High School in Bridgewater, Virginia.

Farmers Insurance offered the Dream Big Teacher Challenge open to applications from any K-12 public education teacher in the country. Our school’s proposal was selected as one of 15 finalists in the country and 1 of 3 schools selected in the Eastern Zone. The voting competition lasted for 2 months and on December 8, 2015, Turner Ashby High School was announced as the Eastern Zone winner of the $100,000 grant! The planning and building of our paved fitness started moving forward. This yearlong journey is documented and can be viewed at www.cindyferek.weebly.com

In 2013, the CDC reported that, “2,163 teens in the United States ages 16-19 were killed and 243,243 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes. That means that six teens ages 16-19 died every day from motor vehicle injuries.” The pain of those numbers unfortunately had become a reality at our school. We had lost 4 teenagers at the high school in the last 4 years and many more in our school district.

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Mobilizing Your Students through Performance Based Assessments

In the world of physical education, there are times when the internalization of teaching models, concepts and strategies is, in my opinion, rushed or incomplete. Models that are not specifically designed for physical education are often either glossed over due to the perception that “we are different” and they do not fit in our discipline, or they are quickly dismissed. For example, what I hear in regard to performance-based assessments from other PE professionals is something to the effect of, “Yeah, we do that every day. Our students perform a skill and we assess it.”

Girl on race track

Although the verbiage matches (performance and assessment), if you stop there the opportunity for tremendous student growth is lost. Performance-based assessments (PBA) are much more than performing a skill. They provide students choices in an area of study, while allowing opportunities for them to both explore an essential question and share what they have learned. There are four main components to a PBA:

  • Instructional Component: Takes place in the classroom with the teacher. This is where a lot of the brainstorming and teacher guidance occurs. PBAs are student driven and student centered with the teacher guiding the instruction, making suggestions, and monitoring the overall process.
  • Choice Component: Allows students choices in what they explore, how they explore it, and what the end result ends up looking like.
  • Research Component: Students take time either at home, in the class, or both to search for and find information that will help them to complete the task and answer the essential question.
  • Action Component: The project is brought into a real world setting and the information gathered is shared in a meaningful way.
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Moving Classes Back Indoors: Winter and the Secondary PE Curriculum

Winter is in front of us and if we have not bowed to it yet, we will soon. That means coming inside and finding ourselves surrounded by four walls and a ceiling. What a change: less room, more noise, and lots of compromises.

Girls gym class with climbing rope

But it isn’t all bad. Getting back in the gym can be a relief in some ways. You can feel as if you have more control over your environment. You don’t have to worry about weather and rainy day plans synching with what you were teaching outdoors. More importantly, you don’t have to worry about the possibility of unpleasant situations from bystanders or trespassers.

Frankly, I used to look forward to knowing that I could be heard more easily indoors and could use the gym’s portable blackboard to diagram the strategies and positioning I was teaching. Sadly, my relief was usually short lived. Limited space and intensified noise levels eventually took their toll. Though I loved when the noise of excited kids rose, being in constant noise seemed to increase my stress level. Then, too, when the limited space made it difficult to keep the kids moving and doing what they enjoyed the whole time we were together, I was not happy. It wasn’t long before addressing that issue became a high priority for me and maybe you, too.

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