Individual Pursuits and the meaningful PE framework

Last summer I read the “Meaningful Physical Education: An Approach for Teaching and Learning” book edited by Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín, Douglas Gleddie, and Stephanie Beni.

I was really interested in applying this type of framework in my lessons and I tried to introduce it with my grade 4 students while being online but it wasn’t that meaningful or successful.

After 8 months of teaching remotely, the school finally opened and we thought that after a few weeks of doing a very short and intense “Adventure Challenge, Cooperative Games unit” we will start with the Individual Pursuits, Athletics Unit.

I thought it was the perfect moment to really introduce the framework and learn along with students.

During this unit of inquiry, we really tried to encourage students to work on their endurance in G4. That was one of the targets. This year was going to be challenging. Many kids DO NOT enjoy running as I do and many did none or very little physical activity while being online. That was one of our biggest concerns, the student’s health and something we could not control, just try to help and bring awareness.

So when we started planning this unit we were not sure how many students will be able to run or even fast walk a whole lap around the field.

We came up with an idea and it was a total success!

I created this poster and told the kids to choose where they thought they were that very first day. And everyone did, everyone found their way to run, even if it was just a little bit, and they were all SO happy. I think they felt the empathy of being unfit.

And we used this for a few more lessons as a warm-up idea. Many kids pushed themselves quite quickly and, of course, they were a few who wanted to do MORE than 2 laps around the whole field.

Then we thought that running was a good idea to start the lesson and to warm up, but I wanted to see if the kids had other thoughts in mind. And they did.

So we introduced more activities. They could still use that poster and also choose to work on their skipping ropes skills as well as ride bikes around the field ( not an easy task, by the way)

During the unit, learners set up goals and work toward those goals usually with a partner they could check in with and support each other.

I like to check with students for understanding and sometimes, to be sure every voice is heard a quickly written 5-minute self-reflection is needed.

I had students thinking of this on their own:

Individual Pursuits-Athletics

Central Idea: Experiences in athletics, help us to develop our skills and set personal goals

What is meaningful to you in athletics? Why?

If you are not too sure think of the events we have practiced and your goal. Why did you choose this goal? What’s special about it?

Their responses gave me some information on what they knew about the unit, but it gave them an idea of where they were at too.

I decided that the feature of challenge and personal challenge could be the most relevant for learners in this unit, but I still introduced the other features to them.

I can’t remember where I found this poster, but I am attaching it here for your reference:

Then, we worked on this together:

What is the MOST, LEAST, and JUST RIGHT challenge for you in athletics?

Before I explain this, I’d like to thank Andy Vasily, Jorge Rogriguez, Zack Smith and Ty Riddick who inspired me in different ways to come up with this idea.

Every student had a number assigned and as I called their number their got a RED sticker for the MOST challenging event, a YELLOW sticker for the LEAST challenging event and a GREEN sticker for the “JUST RIGHT” event.

This made them reflect on their learning and think of what they really wanted to work on as well as think if that was related to their goal. In the picture, the “white” is yellow as I didn’t have any yellow stickers at that time.

This year we changed our central idea and all the grade levels had the same one:

“Experiences in athletics, help us to develop our skills and set personal goals.”

I really liked how we highlighted the word “experiences” That’s all we want to bring and create for students. Meaningful experiences that they will remember and adapt to their own settings. Developing skills also was important for us as learners understood that the techniques helped them to improve their performances and therefore it was related to their goal oftentimes.

This is the Success Criteria we used for this unit.

Once again, I had students using the three colors to determine how they felt, although I realized later that maybe they could have had more than just one green, or one red or yellow.

Inspired by Andy Vasily’s blog and his PYP journey, we talked about what are some ingredients that can help you be successful in your athletics journey.

The big celebration of our success was to have the Sports Days before the winter break holidays.

Usually, parents are invited to this type of event, but because of the measures to prevent Covid-19 outbreaks, we had to limit the numbers.

We had 3 Sports Days. One for EY, KG, and grade 1 students.

Another one for grades 2 and 3 and finally the last one with grade 4 and 5 athletes.

We were thrilled to be able to run these activities and see so many smiles around the field.

Students competed in grades 2-5 for their house color in the different events. The youngest wore their house shirt and had a wonderful time playing and exploring the different events.

We have 4 houses at ISPP, Mekong (blue) Bayon (orange) Kouprey (green) and Lotus (green)

The enthusiasm was palpable, the energy was floating around and everyone was simply, so happy!

This year we introduced the relays in grades 2-5 to race during Sports Days. Everyone took part in it. It was amazing the see these little athletes pushing themselves as well as encouraging each other and giving air hugs after the races!