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Challenge in PE
Recently, our PE Department offered Choice Units to our Grade 7-8 population. We have themed these options around a central focus – this time it was Individual Pursuit – and we offered a range of opportunities for student choice. I intend to blog about my units in a separate post, but I was able to offer Running and Climbing as two of the choices to my different classes. We have three or four teachers in the same block, allowing us to offer 3 or 4 options to students as part of Choice. The feedback from several of my Runners and Climbers is that they felt motivated by choosing something that…
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Finding Meaning through Choice PE
We begin school in person (not online) on Monday and our department have been discussing what we might like to do in PE with our students together in our learning spaces. A novel concept. When polled, our students would like to do many things, so it is hard to prioritize what we should focus on and how to move on without actually seeing our students in person (I haven’t taught in person to students since Jan 2020 – so it will be a very different week for me next week!) I have blogged and done a lot of reading and thinking about the Meaningful PE framework – I love the…
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2021 Professional Growth
I have arrived back in Beijing and to the International School of Beijing (ISB) where I am in the middle of my 5th year as a MS PE and Health professional. As with everyone on the planet, the last year has been very different and as a teacher, this has seen a very huge shift in the way we try to engage with our young people, our colleagues and our pedagogical thinking. Yesterday I read a headline that said Microsoft has gone up 33% in profits from the previous year. It does not surprise me. In May 2020 I was asked to write a reflection about my professional focus and…
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Endurance Athlete – as a woman
This past week, the name Stacy Sims has cropped up on my radar. First was as I ran around the lake one early morning, as I listened to the Purple Patch Podcast and then as I had a virtual coffee with a former colleague as we chatted about inspiring media and this TedTalkX came up (Stacy Sims) and then as I chatted to my coach, Adam, he mentioned to me that he had listened to a webinar from Sims, and I knew that the stars were aligning for a reason. I have been much more reflective on how much nutrition and my hormone cycle dictate my training success. I have…
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ACHPER Victoria October 2020 – Game Sense Presentation
A big thank you to ACHPER Victoria for allowing me to be a part of their ‘Teachers in Action’ series this October. It is great to have an opportunity to learn with others in Australia and be part of some professional conversations around so many different topics. It has allowed me to think more deeply about Why I use Game Sense and to re-read some great resources and feel more fresh about this great model. This blog post is a place for me to share the resources I will be using for this presentation. Those attending or those who are looking for more information can find it here: Google document…
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Physical Literacy – continually evolving lifetime
Physical Literacy is a term that has bounced onto the scene but with so many other terms or focus points in our society – it can be challenging to decide what PL is and how we might define it within our communities and contexts. This article suggests that Physical Literacy has been adopted into the Physical Education curriculum under a Health-focus or policy bias. The different educational curriculum in different countries has used the term Physical Literacy to then create checklists that focus on fundamental movements, skills or activities but may then be excluding other criteria or discussion about how to create Physically Literate members of our community. (Jurbala, 2015…
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(almost) Back and Ready to go.
The time has come. I have been actively burying myself in other tasks, worries and focus areas, but it is time to focus – school is going to start soon and I really need to be ready to go. I have been really enjoying having some 1990s alternative music on my running playlist and this song by Republica somewhat sums up some of the ways I have been feeling and thinking – being back, being ready to go, shouting it out that we are going to make it! But mostly about my mental state – I am trying to put aside the negativity and anxious feelings that sit next to…
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Pondering the right questions. Teaching PE and Health 2020-21
What is PE? What is Health? What is essential? What are our constraints? What is practical? In an exchange of ideas with a few people today, it became more clear to me that as we go back to school or prepare to return to a new academic year, that for many of us, we will not be able to teach PE the way in which we have previously and that for me this means I need to have clear in my own head the questions that rattle around confusing me and muddying the water of clear focus of how to best plan for the start of teaching PE and Health…