Practicing skills is like eating kale – It needs something more

Personally, I like kale, though I haven’t always enjoyed it. Likewise, while I could eat kale plain, I prefer it sauteed in garlic and olive oil or better yet, blended with bananas and strawberries in a smoothie! Practicing skills is the same to me. I have always loved to move but I definitely needed competition, challenge, or socialization to make it palatable for me in my younger years.

Over the past year, I have noticed a recurring theme at conferences: the role of games in physical education. Here is my take on the topic.

Literature Enhanced Physical Education

Read More

English Language Learners (ELLS), Academic Language, & Physical Education (PDF Download)

Phoebe Constantinou and Deborah Wuest share a “toolkit” they have created to help physical education teachers enhance the literacy of students who are English language learners. They explain the steps teachers should initially go through to familiarize themselves with the challenge, and then provide specific strategies that can be implemented into the gymnasium to enhance literacy.

 English Language Learners (ELLS), Academic Language, & Physical Education (PDF Download)
Read More

The Master Teacher: A Lesson in Learning from Coach K

In late January, Duke University Men’s Basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) reached a significant career milestone, becoming the first NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Coach to reach 1,000 wins. Attainment of 1,000 wins is a remarkable accomplishment only achieved by a handful of collegiate coaches.

Harry Statham, who has coached at Division II McKendree (Lebanon, Illinois) since 1967, tops the 1,000-win list with 1,085. Danny Miles, at Oregon Tech (NAIA), is second with 1,016. Krzyzewski is next, with Herb Magee of Philadelphia University (Division II) at 998. In women’s basketball, retired Tennessee coach Pat Summitt is the all-time leader with 1,098 victories. Rutgers coach Vivian Stringer is second with 929 wins…The all-time leader for victories at any level of college basketball is 79-year-old Gene Bess, who is in his 45th season at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and has a 1,203-350 record (Marcus, 2015).

Maybe more remarkable than the sheer number of wins is Coach K’s unrelenting quest for excellence and mastery as a coach. In coaching circles, Coach K is considered a master teacher (Wielgus, 2014). A master teacher is defined as someone that has acquired an expert level of subject knowledge and demonstrates effectiveness in sharing this information with his or her students (Kreber, 2002). As a teacher of sport, the coach acquires knowledge in skill development, game strategy, rules of the sport, etc. Through education, experience, and deliberate practice they can become more effective in their ability to teach the student-athlete (Schempp, McCullick, & Mason, 2006).

Read More

Fuel Up To Play 60: How we Successfully Incorporate the Program into our Daily School Routines

I just sat down after arriving home from presenting a workshop on the benefits of bodyweight exercise at the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) annual convention. In the past few years as an attendee I found a handful of professional development workshops for health and physical education. This year there were over 30. After making my own presentation, I visited others and found myself talking to many health and physical education teaching colleagues about the NFL and National Dairy Council Fuel Up To Play 60 (FUTP 60) program. I’m guessing it probably didn’t hurt that I was carrying a backpack emblazoned with the FUTP 60 logo.

I quickly discovered there was a huge interest in learning how my school achieved such success in the program so quickly and easily. In reality, it wasn’t quick, and it certainly wasn’t easy. We struggled with the program in our first year or two before starting to get our balance and finally running full speed. We went from a handful of students signed up to having hundreds of participants logging their daily nutritional and physical activities. We have had state ambassadors for each of the past two years, one national ambassador this year, and last summer I was inducted into the Program Advisor Hall of Fame. Several current and former NFL stars have come through our school doors to visit and celebrate our students’ achievements. In fact, we’ve become so accustomed to having media presence in our school that it has almost become a ho-hum situation. But a quick and easy are not words I’d use to describe our journey.

The biggest key for us was finding a core of students who wanted to make a difference in their own lives as well as the lives of their classmates. I understand this is asking a lot from 11-13 year olds but sometimes when we challenge our students we are pleasantly surprised. During this summer’s FUTP 60 Student Ambassador Summit in Texas, I heard a very telling statement from one of the attendees. He said we should stop telling our students that they are the leaders of tomorrow but rather that they are the leaders of today! Hearing that one simple statement made me want to challenge my already overachieving students even more. Back in school, the first places I looked were in my school’s Student Council and National Junior Honor Society. I realized that these included students with higher levels of dedication and commitment.

Read More

Special Olympic Lead-Up Skills As Individual Educational Program (IEP) Objectives

Regular or adapted physical education teachers, physical therapists, and occupational therapists could all use Special Olympic (SO) lead-up skills as objectives for children with disabilities IEPs.

Special Olympics

Linking movement skills to Special Olympics offers the following benefits:

  1. Extends teacher instructional knowledge toward teaching sports to children with disabilities;
  2. Links skills to functional activities;
  3. Helps develop basic skills for more successful participation and inclusion in team sports;
  4. SO offers life-long sports opportunities. By law ISDs must make a plan and IEP objectives will help prepare children with disabilities for life after school that includes recreation. Adapted PE, PE, PT, and OT starting at age 12 to graduation (21 years old need) must prepare them for continued physical activities;
  5. SO competition offers a chance to highlight the athlete’s achievements to friends, family, teachers, and volunteers; and
  6. The SO event (opening ceremony, competition, awards, food, dance) is a great avenue for everyone involved to congregate in a fun way, express joy, love, and care toward each other as we celebrate with the athletes.

The Individual Skills Competition (ISC) events for various sports, allow the athlete to practice important fundamental skills that ultimately lead up to organized sporting events. In the complete document attached to this introduction that you are invited to download, we share our experience having presented 10 sports each having several lead-up skills to perform. We have shared several Individual Education Program (IEP) objectives for each sport. Note that, some of the IEP objectives are lead-up components to the ISC, meaning that some SO athletes cannot perform all the skills needed to finish the event. For example, in swimming, athletes are expected to swim a distance of 15 meters. But perhaps we have a student, “Jo” who has Cerebral Palsy and can only swim 10 meters before getting fatigued and unable to finish the race. In this case, Jo’s objective might be to increase his distance by perhaps 20%, 2 out of 3 times. Jo is then working toward finishing the race. Every athlete will have unique abilities and the IEP objectives should reflect where progress and improvement is needed and can realistically be achieved.

Read More

Psychological Skills Training: Pre-Game, Pre-Play

Continuing our Psychological Skills Training series in pelinks4u, this month’s article focuses on developing a warm-up routine prior to competition as well as an abbreviated routine to be used during breaks in competition. Previously learned skills will be utilized and can be accessed from the pelinks4u archives: Getting Loose (Dec. 2011), Breathing Easy (Feb. 2013), Staying on the Ball (June/July 2013), Mental Rehearsal I (Dec. 2013) and Body Rehearsal (June/July 2014).

Pre-Game, Pre-Play Drills

Bring to practice: Copies of this document to give to athletes

Read More

Special Olympic Lead-Up Skills As Individual Educational Program (IEP) Objectives

Source: http://www.rockdaleautism.org/goalsoccer-practices-held-every-sunday/

Regular or adapted physical education teachers, physical therapists, and occupational therapists could all use Special Olympic (SO) lead-up skills as objectives for children with disabilities IEPs. Linking movement skills to Special Olympics offers the following benefits:

(a) extends teacher instructional knowledge toward teaching sports to children with disabilities;

(b) links skills to functional activities;

(c) helps develop basic skills for more successful participation and inclusion in team sports;

Read More