Physical Education Unit

Historically I am not a sporty person.  I never played team sports during high school and usually keep my physical activity to group classes and yoga.  So, when it comes to planning physical education units I ensure that there are activities that everyone enjoy because I want students to have a better experience than I ever did during sports at school.  I endeavour to ensure that all students are catered for within the one lesson so that everyone can leave happy and feel that they have achieved something (raising their self-efficacy).  

While on placement at Halswell School myself and another student teacher planned a PE unit together.  We made sure that we had a warm-up, team game, and closure that all students could participate in. 

We began by doing Tic-Tac-Toe.  A warm up game based around strategy where students need to work as a team and employing the key competency of thinking.

Students are in teams of three or four versing another team.  Each team has 3 beanbags and the aim of the game is to create three in a row.  Students can move any of their teams beanbags to help them in their strategy.  We played this warm up four weeks in a row because the students wanted to keep on doing it!

For the development we have played hoop ball, an activity based out of the Sports Start Canterbury books.  This is a great activity for large groups and provides an opportunity for all students to participate.  Additionally, we have done Rob The Nest.

As a closure students requested Multi Ball, a wonderful sport that ensures everyone has a go and no one is left out!

All activities foster participation and contribution.

CAMP!

I love camp.  It's EOTC at its finest.

I have been involved in camps since I was 15.  I started by getting involved at Teapot Valley Christian Camp as a cabin leader and making my way to being part of organising camps through to being the lead speaker at Junior Kidz Camp.  I cherish the time at any camp for those lasting friendships and relationship building along side all of the amazing activities.

In my second year of my BTchLn I had a placement at Linwood Avenue School.  I ended up going to back and heading to Living Spring on camp with them.  I had an amazing experience - have a look at some of the photos below!

Learning about our local rohe. 

Rock pooling.

Experiencing some of Papatūānuku's handy work.

Who doesn't love free fall rock climbing!

Various Ways of Groupings

I have been very fortunate on all placements as I was able to see various ways and strategies of groupings for reading, writing, and mathematics.

Here are some examples of what I have been a part of or helped to implement within different classroom routines.

During my fourth placement at Tuahiwi School (bilingual, NE-yr4) we used rotations during reading and maths times.  While children were in their rotations different groups were pulled out for explicit teaching of strategies.  The children were grouping according to tuakana teina partnerships.  Because of the vast age ranges and abilities in this rūma the activities needed to suit the wide range of the students, the activities reflected this and were changed to give all students the opportunity to extend their learning.

Reading rotations on the left, maths rotations on the right.

During my fifth and final placement at Halswell School we employed a fluid grouping system for maths.  We began using this at the start of term 3 (the beginning of my placement).  I helped to implement this system in the space using the self-directed learning progressions that another teacher had created and previously used.  This meant that all children had a name tag and that name tag went next to the multiplication/division strategy that they were working on.  The teacher then picked up groups along the strategies for explicit teaching.  Students also had the option to further their learning themselves when they were not being seen by a teacher.  Students could access the videos or page numbers in a text book and work from that.  Once students mastered a strategy they needed to show a teacher or a buddy to get it signed off and move to the next strategy.  I thoughly enjoyed using this system of groupings for mathematics and would seriously consider using this in my future classrooms.
Have a look at how it was set up!

Using fluid groupings

At Halswell School we also used workshops during reading time.  The workshops were based around skills needed in order to be successful in researching, which was our focus for that term.  Students could opt into what ever workshops they wanted based on their individual needs.  All students were encouraged to suggest workshops that they wanted to take.  Students were kept accountable by signing up using Google Sheets, recording which workshops they went to in their weekly timetables, and by showing that they are using those skills in their notes.  

Some students identified a need based around not always need a device for researching.  So, I worked closely with the students and helped them learn about using the public libraries to their full potential. We looked at how to use the catalogue online to find a text that would help us and then I took a group down to Te Hāpua Library to find that specific book.

A small capture of how reading workshops were organised.

My Guiding Principles

During the beginning of my second year within the BTchLn we had an assignment where we had to create our guiding principles as a beginning classroom teacher.  We had to based our guiding principles in relevant readings and research and compare our findings to what we have seen on placement in order to come up with our own guiding principles.  The guiding principles are set within the social and emotional, cognitive, and physical environments in a school setting.  To show all of this I created a Prezi.

Below are screen captures of my guiding principles.  Feel free to have a look at the full presentation here.

Physical: Access to resources

Physical: Time management

Cognitive: Deliberate acts of teaching

Cognitive: Interactive learning experiences

Social and emotional: Building positive relationships

Social and emotional: Scaffolding
This guiding principle is strongly linked into the cognitive aspects of teaching and learning.

Though I created these guiding principles almost two years ago I still hold fast to them.  However, I have expanded and reflected on these principles to develop my guiding principles today.

We All Learn In Different Ways

I am a strong believer in learning through a variety of activities, wether it be centered around the curriculum learning areas, the values of the kura, the key competencies, or activities that are designed to be enjoyed and help strengthen relationships.  Below are several photos from my time amongst various primary schools.

In this photo we are baking shortbread biscuits to go home on Mother's Day to celebrate all the wonderful ladies in our lives.  This activity was a lot of fun (even though we ended up with flour everywhere)!  Through this activity I was able to see children's personalities shine in different ways than during the daily program.  Everybody strengthened their relationships by enjoying each other's company and having fun.

This photo and the one below are taken at the school disco we had one Friday afternoon.  This was one of the options for the school's "fun afternoon" as a part of the school's PB4L.

During this time I was able to interact with students from around the school and, really, just have fun!

Once a week students all went to KiwiCan, a program based around the school's values and learning how to enact the key competencies.  It was important to interact and participate as a teacher during this time because we were the able to take that learning and extend on it in the classroom in order to make the learning meaningful and worthwhile for all students.

 Ōtumatua Friday Quiz

This is a screen capture from a quiz that myself and another student teacher co-created during our time at Halswell School.  It was an activity designed for the students to have fun, integrate ICT in a way they hadn't experienced before, and to celebrate the learning that they had done over the time that we had been on placement.  Have a look at the full quiz here.

Circuit Training Unit at Hornby Primary School

During my third placement at Hornby Primary School (MLE with years 1-3) I designed a circuit training unit.  This fit into the school wide focus on sports for that term.  We began by looking at what circuit training is and a circuit that the Crusaders rugby team use in their training sessions.  The children loved getting up and being the tuakana by showing what each activity was (i.e. lunges, squats, planking) and the teina very much enjoyed trying the activities out!  After that we did brainstorms that looked at individual sports, what muscles were needed to be developed, and some exercises that could help us in that.

Furthering on from that children were able to design their own circuit based around a certain sport. They needed to research which muscles needed to be developed and the certain activities that would help do just that.  Children worked collaboratively to research, design, and create their circuit.

The next step was to give it a go!  The initial plan was to buddy up with another group and teach each group their circuit, explain why they chose those activities, and their process for designing the circuit. However, Papatūānuku didn't bring out the sunshine and gave us rain instead.  But that didn't stop us! Instead we decided to do the circuits in the hall and have randomly selected groups teach and explain their circuits to the rest of us.  Have a look at how it went!

We started off by setting expectations and reiterating school values so that all children could be successful in this environment.

All children introduced their circuit in their groups and explained the activities and why they chose them.  I was there to tautoko if need be.

This is how we set up our stations and we had them as a rotation for one minute at each station. 

Here are some of the stations in action!

All children were highly successful in their circuit trainings and had a lot of fun!  This learning didn't just stay within the allocated time frame for the unit, either.  We then used circuits for fitness for the week and I often saw students creating and teaching others their own circuit during break times.  Tau kē!