Teaching PE has been probably the most challenging subject to teach the last 18 months, whether it be online or strict restrictions in place in person. I admire and I am proud of how much collaboration has happened between PE teachers from all over the world. Sharing resources and ideas to the extent we have would surprise some other subject teachers.
3 weeks back into the term and thoughts/conversations between colleagues and I are about what we want to achieve this year. I feel after a saturation and requirement of students using computers that PE teachers should aim to minimise screen time. Too often, students were stuck to the screen in order to understand and follow PE and other lessons. Let us remind them that to live healthy lifestyles, they should be able to look up around them and enjoy the physical and social environment around them. Therefore, I will put emphasis on these areas:
- Less focus on video analysis. More focus on verbal feedback (opinion) with performer. Synthesise debate between performer and analyser.
2. Instigate leadership and independence in tasks. They should have learned some of this from the period of online learning, now have them put it into practice. Whether that be a 3-5 minutes section in primary or an almost complete class in middle/high school.
3. Be (extra) patient with below par movers. It’s been a tough period for everyone. Think of open ended, creative tasks to improve their physical weaknesses. Knee over toes guy has been a eye opener on the extensive benefits of walking/running backwards and unilateral movements.
4. More game based, team challenges. Unwillingly, students have missed out on those challenges and problem solving skills from team sport. Even in more individual units such as Health Related Fitness, changing my plans for students to challenge each other as a group and set mini targets on what they think they can achieve.
School Sport
I am eager to resume school sport as students have sorely missed this aspect that has been freely available to all in life pre-pandemic. High school sport expectations will be low, I know more than a handful will be arriving without any club experience. Therefore, basic expectations set out from the beginning of session 1 is crucial if I want a student to enjoy this experience and encourage him/her onto the next step of continuing this as a possible regular activity later in life.
My overall objective of school sport is to build rich engaging experiences for the students. This approach will remain the same as I know lifelong friendships and memories can be formed within school sport. Listening to former professionals that have featured football podcasts like Jamie Carraghers “The Greatest Game”, they say their greatest games are ones that are won with friends. Thus, creating this atmosphere of unity between friends will not only create success within the team, but make those memories all the more special if we go forward and achieve trophies.
Please do get in contact if you wish to know in more detail how I aim to achieve these targets this year.
Reflection on PE teaching 