Walking into school seeing all of those familiar, smiling faces definitely beats last year's attempt at getting to know everyone all at once and being the "new" teacher. :)
To start off the year, I shared this information with my middle school students through a newsletter:
In 2009, 1,375 physical educators participated in an online survey for NASPE, the National Association of Sport and Physical Education. This survey explored key aspects of PE programs in our nation’s schools.
For nearly 50% of these educators, the primary focus of their PE program is “health-related fitness,” followed by “motor skills and movement forms” (33%), “personal and social responsibility” (12%) and “preparation for sport participation” (6%).
When asked to rate each on importance for a middle school setting, physical educators prioritized “health-related fitness” as most important (87%) and “preparation for sport participation” as least important (25%).
So, is WSCS part of this “new PE”? I’d like to say so. But please don’t be mistaken, I love many traditional and non-traditional sports. But teaching sports is not my sole purpose and PE class is not sports practice. My job is to use sports among other activities to encourage lifetime physical activity. My responsibility is to give each student the necessary tools to feel confident in their skills, feel knowledgeable in their personal health, and become attracted to some new activities that they can use after their time at WSCS.
The National Standards for Physical Education are listed in the top left corner of this newsletter. As we go throughout this year, I encourage you to ask your kids what activities, exercises, worksheets, or sports they are participating in. My goal is to address all five standards throughout a variety of fun and engaging activity.
I am blessed to be able to call this my job. I look forward to teaching, challenging, and encouraging each student this year as we dive into our own “new PE”.
After our discussion, we reviewed expectations, assignments, and opportunities they will have this year. We then jumped into some cooperative team challenges:
1) Zig Zag Team Toss
2) Group Juggling
3) Team Mat Challenges
2nd-5th grades also reviewed expectations and rules, discussed what P.E. stands for, and started some fun team challenges that encouraged following directions and encouragement like:
1) Space Invaders
2) Shipwreck
3) Team Juggle
4) Fitness/Exercise Stations
Once each class learns how to work together cooperatively in an encouraging way, we will jump into our first units, Fitness Testing for 4th-8th, Aerobic Fitness for 3rd, and Body Parts/Actions/Planes for 2nd.
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