Meaningful Experiences in PE: An Inquiry into Movement and Gymnastics (Part 1)

How do we foster meaningful experiences in physical education?

As teachers, as we plan our units, are we thinking of what is relevant for students? Or shall we call them experiences instead of units? What will bring them joy? What will help them develop interpersonal skills? Perhaps improve their motor competence? Is fun a critical element to fostering meaningful experiences?

After a few years of online school and disrupted learning due to the coronavirus infection, we are back face to face and minimizing restrictions. This has had a significant impact on our teaching and learning.

This year I’m also teaching grade five learners again, and our second transdisciplinary unit was “How We Express Ourselves” a rhythmic gymnastics experience in our PE lessons. We were able to plan for intentional and continuous learning exploring the commonalities and different points of view from the classroom teachers, the arts, and physical education.

This year we wanted to use the meaningful PE approach in this experience and we added the creativity feature as we thought it could be relevant to the students learning and understanding of the unit.

So we started the unit by asking the students “How this experience can be meaningful to me?”

And documented it using a large piece of paper for each feature of the meaningful PE approach

Students had 2 or 3 minutes to add their ideas on the paper, then they passed it to another group. We did this with all 6 features.

This whole activity didn’t take more than 15 minutes

During the first week, we had a number of activities for students to learn, practice and develop basic gymnastics skills such as rols, balances, jumps and leaps.

Students adding play which makes it more fun and meaningful for them

The week after we starting introducing different rhythmic gymnastics apparatus, ball, hoop and ribbon.

Students explored different ways to move the different apparatus, as well as to combine them with different gymnastics’ skills.

We had QR codes with expert videos for them to learn more about it, and teachers were facilitators of learning.

Artistic Gymnastics

I love gymnastics, and I always get very excited when the time comes to teach this unit. This year though, the day before I started the actual unit I broke my ankle and had to be on a cast for four weeks. This meant that for the first ten days I was out of school, which was quite disappointing.
Thankfully, the subs were able to teach the lessons so students did not miss the unit.
For this unit, I wanted to use the meaningful PE approach, and this happened once I got back to class.
With grade four students we agreed on what success criteria would look like.

We have a gymnastics room on the third floor of a building. Students could use different apparatus such as the vaulting, the balance beam, and the floor once they were there with the sub.
When I came back to school after two weeks of the injury, I still had the cast on and it was hard for me to walk that far. So we used one of the gyms, brought lots of mats, and focused on the floor.
The students started to create their movement composition having in mind the success criteria we talked about and agreed upon.

I did something similar in G2, just adjusted it a little bit.

G2 Gymnastics Movement Composition Success Criteria

Central Idea: Balances, rolls, travel, and jumps are elements of a gymnastics performance.

You have to compose a gymnastic movement composition individually or w. Your movement composition must have at least 5 different skills. (balances, rolls, and weight transfers) That would be one of the ways to perform for your audience.

I can compose a gymnastics movement composition (performance) that:

• starts with a balance
• has  different rolls ( for example, forward roll, pencil roll)
• has at least different weight transfers ( for example, cartwheel, handstand, headstand)

My performance is continuous throughout (flow)

My performance movements are controlled (control and proper form)

My performance movements have a sequence

My performance has smooth transitions most of the time (style)

My Plan

Part	Draw or Name your Movement Pattern
1	Balance (starting position)
2
3
4
5
Optional (add more if you want)

How can we make this a meaningful experience for them?

Many of us have done movement compositions previously and asked students to perform several skills, so how is this different from what we have done previously?
This year the gymnastics unit was a real CHALLENGE for all. Why?
Well, for the past two years, students have been online during this unit, so they missed many of the experiences in the gymnastics room, using different apparatus and especially the body control. We did practice a few skills while being online however, we were limited to doing balances and rolls for safety reasons.
And I had a cast on, so my mobility was very limited as well as the capacity to demonstrate the skills.
In the gym, we had arranged a few mats for them to practice the skills before they started working on their movement composition, so there were different stations to practice, for instance, rolls, headstands (mats by the wall), handstands (mats by the wall) and cartwheels.

Soon, students started working on their compositions.

When I asked a few 4th graders to show me what they have created so far, they first showed me the paper with their ideas, and I asked them. “Ah, this is nice. Do you know how to do a cartwheel? How about a headstand?” They both struggled with that, so I told them they had to find a way to show that they could transfer the weight from feet to hands.
We agreed that “mule kicks” was something they could work towards too and do. They were much happier and had a “just right” challenge in mind.

We also added blocks to support students who wanted to do headstands or handstands but didn’t have the balance to perform them during their floor routine. For them, knowing that they had those blocks helped them to keep practicing. Some of them did not need them during their actual performance.
Social interaction was huge in this unit too. I let the students choose their groups or do it individually, although most chose to be in a group. Quarantine times were an additional challenge as members of a group would be in and out depending on the week. So the students had to be creative and adjust their routines, learn a new one, join a new group, etc.
We talked about motor competence and what they did to improve their skills. We did peer feedback, teacher feedback, and self-feedback using video so they could understand what we were talking about when we told them: “Bring your hips up, or stretch your legs, point your toes…”
We also had some “check-in” lessons that helped us think about where we were in the unit

Grade two students were very creative and choose to do partner balances which helped to enhance their performance.

In previous years we had invited teachers and admin. to watch the gymnastics performances. We even ran an assembly for the whole ES.
This year was different, but we still got to share our floor movement compositions with families and homeroom teachers through a digital platform called “Seesaw” Grade two had an assembly and several of their performances were added as short clips to the assembly too.

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We wrapped our unit with some reflections. I wrote down a few questions to guide the reflection, and students recorded themselves in Seesaw adding their thoughts on this unit.

This is the G2 reflection that I added as an activity in Seesaw.

I forgot to mention that apart from the movement composition, the students were invited to use other apparatus to share a favorite skill or something they improved during this unit. That was optional, yet many students chose to do it, which was great to see!

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)

Mentor books

Jump Ropes

Bike Riding

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!