Student Leadership and ES Sports Day

So, our solution for this year is:
Early Learning students to Grade 2 will not have a competitive day. There will be maximum focus on participation and having as many turns at each station as you like and working collaboratively but also individually for success.
Grade 3-5 students will have a competitive day with each station set to have a scoring system where you can get 1, 2, 3 or 4 points based on different criterion but still the major focus is on maximum participation and fun.
Students will work in Class groups and will rotate through 10 stations (2 of them rest stations). The stations will be easy to set up and run and will include equipment and a laminated card with instructions and a diagram of the set up.
Stations will be a mixture of individual events (eg. sack racing) and team events (eg. adventure challenges) to allow for different styles of leadership and learning to take place. Scoring will be based on zones – if you are throwing an object for length – there will be 4 zones marked out – for example we will have 150+ objects thrown in by the class and then count up the number in each zone.
Students will not have done the exact game or activity before the day, so there is a newness factor to the day, not repetitive from PE class.
Next Steps for 2016
Next year I would like to set up and run a unit with my Grade 8 students where they plan, design, create and run ES Sports Day. Half of them will run the younger year group and the others the older year group. I would like them to consider and use the Design Cycle to collaborate together and create this day:
- Take on roles for success in the unit/day (eg. coordinator of the day; score keepers; station leaders etc)
- plan and run the warm up (dance? tag game? equipment? music?)
- plan the activities for each station – get the equipment and practice and
- go to the PE classes or talk to the kids and PE teachers about their ES Sports Day unit so that they can find out what they are inquiring into and how they can incorporate those concepts and skills in their stations.
- make a video that shows how to do each station
- use QR codes on posters and possibly use an app like Augmentation
- Brief the ES teachers and students
- Come to Sports Day and run it with the students and parents
- Keep score/tally the scores
- Run the Relay races at the end of the day
- Finish off the day
- Take photos of the day, Tweet or use social media
- Evaluate their planning based on the event itself
Eventually I would also like to use Grade 5 students to assist our ELC students as part of their active leadership too, but this also needs to be considered and thought out a little more.
I am sure that there are others who already do this – I would like to hear how it runs at your school and any advice you have to offer would be welcome.
A big thank you to the YIS PE department as well as Alie Quinn who share their great ideas and thoughts on this topic.
One Comment
Pingback: