1. Scoops, balls and pylons
2. Pylons and bean bags3. Hoola-hoops and pylons and dodgeballs
4. Two hockey nets, pylons and small balls
As you can see, the pylons are the biggest part of our inquiry / play-based gym learning / exercise. We have a set of 70 different sized pylons plus a set of 25 purple rectangle pylons. This gives a large number of pylons available for student use.
We also have lined up our set of 7 tricycles and 12 plasma cars and 1 little red wagon and put out pylons and asked students to make an indoor track (usually I make the track on my prep and then students drive the trikes and plasma car through my track).
These activities provide students with about 15-20 minutes of focused inquiry and engagement. It is neat to see the games they create. Once students began forming numbers with the pylons. Other times students created distance (throwing) challenges with the balls / bean bags. There was lots of "talk" as they started out. For our class, the first 5-8 minutes was chaotic as students tried things that they didn't like or didn't work. The last 10 minutes of play saw the ideas develop into neat games and student-led activities.The "make a track" activity usually means that several children really like setting up a track and the remainder of the class just puts pylons places. We might ask for "track creating kids" to leave computer class early (my prep) to help me set up.
I need more ideas! I have looked online and can't find many examples of play-based, student or inquiry driven gym class lesson ideas. If you have any, please post!
Thanks for posting and opening up the whole area of kids using their creativity in the gym.
ReplyDeleteGreat opportunity to explore with the kids what criteria they can be aiming for as they modify activities that they currently do and create new ones. It is also an opportunity to identify strengths in individuals who may not get acknowledgment in the academic areas.
I just went to my bookshelf to look for the book Silver Bullets -on co-operative and trust games and activities. These are all great for building community in that they generally are great activities where everyone wins i.e they don't involve the traditional winner and looser dynamic. It would be good to explore this -encourage and create challenges where the kids need to work together and help each other in order to do something better. Time challenges are one approach -how can we all do ??? and work together as a group to all get better at it i.e do it in a shorter time. Reminds me of a challenge I was in with 12 educators in a leadership camp many years ago where the goal was to get everyone over a 14 foot wall without any equipment. What a great feeling when we achieved it.
Experiencing that great feeling in the gym can lead to kids working together better to achieve other goals in the classroom by each of them helping each other. The ones who know words helping those who do not and those who know some letters helping those who do not etc. Can we share the teaching role amongst the learners so that they become a more effective learning team? I think we can in many ways if we work at it. How can we establish group learning criteria that all can have success with and remembering not putting group pressure on any of those involved?
As followup to the creation of activities in the gym there will great motivation and opportunity to integrate with other subjects when the kids can draw maps, make rules, draw what happened, identify vocabulary ...and evolve the game further for next time. This is all authentic learning for the kids and through this engagement one of the best ways of addressing other expectations from formal curriculum. There will be no loss of student engagement over the years if for much of the time curriculum can be addressed in this way -through the genuine interests of the learners involved.
Thank you for your suggestions Stan. We will definitely mull over these ideas and try to go further in our gym times. I've used cooperative games when teaching intermediate and that really engaged many learners. I like the ideas of following up track play with map making. Thank you, thank you!
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