Term 4 survival

feeling really quilty! The same things that have made it hard to do PE have stopped me blogging.

Last week i made up this great game 

Made up a really cool game today. 10'kids with touch balls, two taggers, one tagger chased people with balls who when tagged have to dumb the ball for a dummy half, other tagger tags people without balls ( probably have about 12 of them). If tagged without the ball they are out. Focused on keeping an eye on a ball carrier who will need a dummy, and playing the ball quickly.

Once there are no people to be dummy continue playing but as played dump the ball they will become fair game for elimination unless the think really fast and act as dummy.

At this stage of the year its about being creative enough to keep them into it. We are doing softball, longball and touch but its the touch where we are doing some real teaching. We have done some truck n tralier relays and some 3 v 3 touch games as well as the game above which keeps changing and getting better.

Swim weeks continue

Following last weeks Cultural Festival our matua offered to take my class. We have been doing swimming and so this was a blessing.

Matua taught them a traditional game

Rules: 2 teams, one ball , players have to pass the ball five times to get a point.

Only rules are that you can only catch the ball with one hand, over guarded is decided by being closer than 1 and half arm lengths.

Game starts with the ball in the centre and two teams lined up ready to run towards the ball. Like the hunger games.

 No short passes.

Variations : allow teams to use two hands to get the ball of the ground.

Swimming!!!!

Ok so now we have entered our swim weeks where students take 2 hours to get a 30 minute lesson.

So we have cancelled most things

Students get swimming, maths or reading and are pretty much had it in the afternoons.

We are going to still get golf but won't revisit actual PE activities HOWEVER it does give me a chance to fill in the "what's in our community brainstorm" using swimming as a starter context.

2.30 lessons

Finally got a decent game of tchoukball happening. I used gutter boards and size 3 basketballs.

However the timeslot we gave them was 2.20 so tensions were high and session was littered with "c strand learning opportunities"

A number of key students needed to be monitored and still individuals were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Will revisit again

Tomorrow I hope.

first problem of the week

so here we go... started the day with kids asking if we were going to play tchoukball...

....but one of our teachers was away and he had an iPad workshop booked in with an outside facilitator - all day. So rather than run PD for a reliever I said I would host the workshop and therefore cancel most of my programme. We did manage to squeeze in our golf clinic as another outside provider was in and I didn't want to waste their time.

Note - we only book outside providers in during the term when we explore using local facilities.Most terms do not have a great need for outside groups.

so the work around is not very easy ... i have release in my normal PE timeslot tomorrow and i dont want to give that up. My release teacher doesnt know the game so...looks like Thursday I guess.

some forgotten PA opportunities

OK so i completely forgot about the weekly Jump Jam session today! and also the Tuesday Golf clinics with First Tee Golf.

So with all these other activities on offer it's important to try to wrap a big idea around the use of all of these unrelated activities.

I'm going to led the students to promote a PA of their choice. They will need to select an activity that is geographically accessible and then promote it's use in a format to suit the purpose.

The week ahead

I thought I would go on the record and note what I hope to do this week and then see if I manage to stick to the plan

I intend to have two proper lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm going to revisit Tchoukball and introduce touch before setting a task for the students to share a local facility and promote what it offers.

On Thursday I plan to play a sport. Perhaps a kabaddi game or touch rugby mini tournament.

I'm also intending to do a fitness rotation on Friday.

So its on record ...let's see.

Helping out at UC

Was lucky enough to be invited in to join a PE session with the Grad Students the other day.

We played all sorts of games like chuck the chicken, corner ball and change up and managed to link these to some of the bigger ideas like
improving performance, engaging the community, participating in activity and using local resources. 

Students seemed to get that the purpose of PE is bigger than the game or activity you are using.

Made me think the audience I should be sharing my stuff with is actually the curriculum writers in schools DP's and principals etc.

A rewarding afternoon tho...

Copies of the games can be found on the various wikis... contact me to get a joining code.

Local tennis club

As part of our scoping of the community we invited the coach from the local club down to take a few sessions.

But of course it rained.... So we went into the hall and changed what was delivered.

Some individual skills and a small sided game. One third watching, two thirds playing with a rotation      every so often.

This session was then put through the filter of our topic "using local resources" We discussed the cost, the access, the equipment needed and then talked through ways around these barriers.

They are very keen to get back to tchoukball so I'll probably run with it for awhile before setting the assessment task to promote a local facility using a photo or video that features them.

We had a great session today.

We haven't had any formal lessons lately as we've had various school wide activities making things difficult.

So today I re introduced the idea that we were going to scope the community and identify the places that allow for opportunities for Physical Activity.

Then we went out and played defend the cone. We set up two games and just went for it. We stopped at various points and discussed the best time to run or pass and then how to execute a good shot. We then set up some basic drills to practise shooting before returning to a few more games. (TGfU style)

We then returned and completed a brainstorm type chart that showed that games like handball can be played at the local YMCA and that the problems with accessing this were COST and TRANSPORT. We also reflected on past weeks and included PARKOUR and GOLF as we have had these groups out recently too.

Things that made this lesson really workable were 1. a general TA was available to support the class at the time, and 2. a student teacher was working with a small group of students on another task at the time.

If you would like details of defend the cone you can contact me or join my current term 3 wiki www.activeimprove.wikispaces.com contact me for a joining code.



Not an actual photo (was too busy playing) we are aiming to have a go at Tchoukball soon.

The term so far

Just to explain ... I'm not going to detail the programme and activities. If you want that you can contact me or register for my websites.

The blog is to describe the issues faced each week or so..

So here's a summary of weeks 1-4 in my programme.

The intention is to do pe couple of times a week and also to have the kids involved in various sports as well.

Weeks 1-4 we have had weekly sport, a couple of fitness style rotation sessions, daily culture group withdrawals, weekly dance group withdrawals, visiting coaches from Parkour and Tennis and  a couple of actual pe lessons.

Our unit is supposed to focus on whats in our community and look at the opportunities for physical activity

Why blog

I've been doing things in physical education for years. I've been teaching all sorts of interesting units, lessons and modules. I've done some lecturing and some consulting and even some resource writing. I've helped other groups and organisations get off the ground so that they can offer programmes people actually want.

 I've been on all sorts of professional development for literacy, numeracy, ICT, behaviour management, community engagement and the stuff we all are sent on. Everytime I've morphed the concepts into pe settings to the point where I now have a pretty unique programme.

But I've never actually documented what it's like to deliver Physical Education in a setting that seems hell bent on making it harder and harder to do so.

It's getting harder to squeeze time in between national standards testing and reporting ( not to mention teaching). The pressure to make kids literate and numerate seems to ignore the idea that kids need to also be functioning people who exist physically and actually need to be in the world.

Along with this various other organisations want to get a piece of the pie. Sports groups, dance groups, culture groups all wanting to get time in your programme so that they can achieve their aims. Sure these group offer physical activity but ...... ( no doubt you've heard this argument before)

So I thought it was about time I wrote down what it is that I do hoping to paint a picture of the Primary School Physical Education playing field