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.