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Running Activity – ES Running Club – Week 1
Driveway Chalk Figure by Steve Snodgrass CC BY Last year I co-ran an Elementary Activity to coincide with our upcoming Cross Country Day. The Concept that I wanted to drive home to my students was that running wasn’t just about winning and that we need to work collaboratively as a group of social or competitive runners. I see people running every time I run out in our community and the people that make eye contact, who smile or just nod to acknowledge that you are both running and you are out and in the air is such a powerful way to motivate you to continue running. Running can be an…
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MYP #PhysEd and the inquiry cycle – Net Games for HS students
Mastermind by Steve Berry CC BY SA YIS have adopted the MYP Next Chapter this year and this means that our PE Department are starting to sort out how our criteria have changed under the new guide. My colleague, Alex, and I are quite into semantics, and can quite easily engage in conversation about what words mean and how we ensure our learners are truly connecting their learning to their assessment and feedback through the use of the key command words. So far I am enjoying the fact that the new command words (eg. describe, explain, justify) are the same words that are found in other subject guides, this ensures…
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Back to School Night
Speech Bubble by Alice Bartlett CC BY SA Back to School Night is probably found in every school in every country, possibly you call it something different at your school. It is the night where parents are invited to come into the school and informally meet teachers and receive information about what their children will be covering in their courses in the academic year. What I am interested in knowing is how Physical Education teachers use this night to showcase their PE programme. Last year was my first year at YIS and I didn’t want to make major changes, I went with the flow of the department and looked at…
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Dance – Concepts, Visual Learning and Formative Assessment
A few months ago I posted about our Just Dance unit for Grade 7 students. This was a big change for us as Dance educators and has really been a valuable learning tool for our students. As this was so successful for our G7 students, we decided to run a more advanced form of it for our G9 and G10 students. We wanted them to experience a Dance unit that allowed for success for everyone and that ensured we have a chance to formatively assess along the way rather than leaving the final summative assessment as the be-all-end-all of the unit. We also decided to use a Visual Learning approach…
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Concept based learning – Invasion Games
Lego Spellen by Dirk Houbrechts CC BY NC For those who know me, you will know that I have recently moved from UNIS Hanoi to Yokohama Int’l School. This has been a big change for myself (and my family) and I am working in a new PE department and have taken on the Head of Department role. I am relishing the opportunity to put many of our good practice down in writing so that it is clear to others that our PE dept sees some fundamental truths as important and that this manifests itself in our classes, everyday. Now I am also part of the #PEPLC community, organising a…