Rightly, learning how to swim is a firm part of the PE curriculum, it is an important life skills and life saving skill.  But it is left up to schools to decide how to teach it with the only requirement being for teachers to have a valid life saving award.  In an ideal world schools would employ either a qualified coach or they would send teachers on a coaching swimming course (Swimming is quite a specific skilled sport, when compared to other sports taught in school).  But due to financial constraints this is sadly not the case for many schools.  So I’m left, like many teachers to figure things out for myself.  Luckily I’m assisted by a parent volunteer and a teaching assistant, which means that we can divide into smaller groups to cater for the needs of non swimmers and intermediate swimmers alike.  But I don’t think I’ve cracked these lessons yet and I don’t think I’ve quite got the children having the quality instruction that they need to receive.  So I thought I’d share some of my ideas here.

The first hurdle for any school teaching swimming is the time it takes out of the  school day with time for travel and getting changed, we only get a 30 minute session in the pool, so sessions need to be very focussed.  This and splitting the class into small groups means that my instruction takes more of a coaching format.  I give the children short instructions and key points to focus on, so that the sessions are as active as possible and the children get more individual feedback than in whole class teaching.  The problem with grouping in this way is that I have less of a handle on what the other two groups are doing and I don’t think they are receiving the structured coaching they deserve.  So I am debating whether to try a different approach.  Introducing a skill at a whole class level for 5 minutes.  Then splitting into smaller groups to try some focussed differentiated session (acquiring and developing skills) with each adult assisting a group for 15 minutes.  Then finishing with a 10 minute session of children applying their skill as a whole class or in groups.  I think the use of more games would help some children develop water confidence.

So far I’ve had 3 weeks of sessions.  The first week was an introductory session, where we went over the pool rules and safety, then we did an assessment width of the class and split the children into 3 ability groups.  The following two weeks I have coached the higher ability group, where we have broken down the front crawl stroke.  I got the children to improve each element of their stroke, before the children built it back up into an improved  stroke. At the same time I’ve struggled to keep an eye on what the other two groups are doing.  Both of the other adults have been coaching swimming with the school for quite a few years, so they are used to working in a certain way and they coach using their prior experience.  But is this good enough?  Is it not better to have a more thought through and planned approach?  I think the answer may be in experimentation and seeing which method is more effective, while keeping the other adults on  board.

Having previously been a lifeguard and a watersports instructor, I’ve ran a few swimming games in the pool before.  So here is a few ideas, that I’ll use to develop childrens water confidence and develop their skills.

North South East West

Explain that each side/end of the pool represents north, south, east and west.  Children are given instructions then have to go to the correct side of the pool when you shout the instructions.  Then you can introduce the following instructions and actions:

• Submarine – Lie on your back with one foot in the air.
• Bombs Overhead – mushroom float
• Captain’s Coming – all stand to attention and salute the captain
• Captain’s Girlfriend – wolf whsitle
• Seagulls Overhead – Stand on one leg, flap arms and make seagull noises
• Climb the rigging – Do climbing actions

Dolphin Jumps
Children surface dive through hoops

Wave Machine
Swimmers line up along the rail at the shallow end, facing the wall.  They hold the rail and push in and out, in time with each other until a wave action builds up.

This is more of a fun activity and won’t develop children swimming skills, you will need to be aware of non-swimmers during this activity.

Water Polo
Two teams compete to score as many goals as possible in a set time, the highest score wins.  The players are not allowed to swim with the ball.  The ball cannot be knocked or wrestled out of people’s hands.  The ball must be passed at least three times before a goal is scored.  Teachers are not allowed to score except in extreme circumstances!

This has been a bit of a rambling post where I discuss my current approach.  I will write a new post in the future, when I have experimented with my methods of teaching swimming and I’ve got some good ideas, as to the best practice.

Photo: http://capl.washjeff.edu/2/m/5014.jpg Courtesy of capl@washjeff.edu.  Creative commons 3.0 licence.

A few weeks ago I took my children outside to the bottom of our playground where we have several trees.  This was part of a literacy lesson on the secret garden, where we were gathering vocabulary using our senses.  This sparked a lot of discussion in my class, as they stopped and observed in the playground for a rare silent moment they started to observe so many tiny details that have always passed them by.  This highlighted the fact that my class know very little about nature, but it also showed how much interest that they started to show in a subject that was so alien to them.  So the other day I started to think, what an under used resource the bottom of the playground is and there is a lot my class could learn by studying just one part of it in detail.  If the rain stops, I might venture outside with my class to enjoy the autumn weather and my mission is to educate them a little bit further about the bottom of the playground. I don’t want this to be the focus of whole learning, as we have some exciting topic work planned already, but what if we spent a few minutes studying this area at regular intervals.  What changes would we observe?  So I’ve compiled the following list of  a few short activities that I hope to try with my class outside.

1. Take a picture of the tree every month throughout the year, then display the board, so that children can watch the changing seasons.

2.  Estimate the height, width and age of the tree. stand a person of known height next to the tree, and ask children to estimate how many times taller the tree is compared to the child.

3. compare the ratio of the shadow of a known object (e.g. a metre rule) with
the shadow of a tree.

4. Get my class to research and identify the species of tree.  I’ll get them to take a photo and a few leaves to help them identify the tree using this website http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/tree-identification

4. Then I intend to return the next day to measure the height of the tree.  Here are three explanations of how to do this using triangulation. 1. nrich 2. woodland trust 3. clinometer.

5. Then get them to measure the width of the tree with a tape measure. fast-growing tree, such as pine or willow, increases its girth by approximately 3 cm a year. Trees such as oak, ash and beech grow more slowlyand increase their girth by about 2 cm a year. So divide your width measurement by 2 or 3 to figure out the approximate age.

6. Discuss what a tree needs to live using: //www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/wwww/scottishwoodlands/flash/index.shtml

7. Survey for mini beasts and other wildlife  that live in and around our tree of study.

8. Take a bark rubbing of the tree.

9. Research some tree facts.

• One walnut tree can produce as much as 70 kg of nuts every year
• Oak trees cannot produce any acorns until they are 50 years old.

The woodland trust have a number of free downloadable resource to aid my tree research.

I’ll let you know in the future,  how it all went.Why not carry out a mini project of your own to get to know your playground?

Photo Credit: My tree at dusk by joiseyshowaa (CC)

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out some of my other teaching ideas?

Problem solving ideas

Team building ideas

PE warm ups

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, but I got distracted by the Olympics and the hustle and bustle of the school year.  Better late than never.  Well here are a few ideas to get to know your class. They may still come in useful over the next few weeks as a way to build up relationships and would be useful personal development activities in there own right.

Shoes game
(This idea comes with a smelly feet warning)

Children sit in a circle and take off one of their shoes, they throw this into the middle of the circle.  The teacher then picks one of the shoes and the person who owns it, has to say to say three things about themselves and one of them has to be a lie.  The other children then guess which of the three facts was a lie.

This idea could work with a whole class, but may work better as a small group.

Ball Throw:
This idea was taken from http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2012/04/21/goal-8-share-an-activity-30goalsedu/ check out the video. I’ve used ball games in the past to get to know my class, but I like the idea of children saying something about who threw the ball, as it gets the children to work a bit harder and think about how they value each other.

Get yourself a soft sponge ball and the idea works as follows.  A child throws the ball to someone in the class.  That person then says a positive attribute of the person who threw it, before throwing it to the next person.  A variation on this is for the person to ask a question before throwing the ball.

Sribbles:
A collaboration idea.  This isn’t really a getting to know you idea, but I think it could be fun to try out at the start of the year.  It should teach your class something about creativity, collaboration and the ownership of ideas.  It’s basically my version of Anthony Browne’s Shape Game  He explains the concept better than I can:

I give children in my class different coloured marker pens.
What I do is give each child a piece of sugar paper and get them to draw some scribbles on it.  They then pass their sugar paper it to the next person who adds a squiggle and we carry on drawing a couple of squiggle each time.  No one is allowed to write their name on the paper and no one can claim ownership.  You need to judge when to stop I find about four or five times is enough.  I then get the class to stop and visualise their different pictures and look for any images that they can see.  Then I demonstrate how to change this into a picture and the children do their own.  Browne also brought out an online version for you to play with

The wind is Blowing

I played this last week with my class and it was a great way of learning more about them.  The class stand in a circle ideally use some markers to stand behind, so that there are a limited number of places.  One child stands in the middle and says something about themselves in the form of a category.  For example; “the wind is blowing for everyone who wears glasses.” Then all the children who wear glasses have to swap places including the person in the middle.  The slowest person to swap will now be the person who is on in the middle of the circle and they have to think of a new category.  Note: Children aren’t allowed to swap with the person next to them.

Silent Ball
Last year I had a child who joined my class for three days, then sadly was relocated to another school.  Sadly I can’t remember his name, but he left a legacy in my class called silent ball.  Last year I didn’t have a problem getting my class to talk, it was keeping quiet that they found difficult and this game provided a bit of necessary respite during the day.

If your thing is singing (It’s mine in a shouty sort of way occasionally) and that’s the way you like to get to know your class. Then here are a couple of websites with Round Robin Songs you could use:
http://www.k-3teacherresources.com/the-telephone-song.html
http://www.k-3teacherresources.com/who-stole-the-cookie-from-the-cookie-jar.html

If you enjoyed these ideas you might want to check out my other team building ideas.

Photo Credit: Human Pyramid by Rob with Twobs (CC)

I went climbing last weekend and as I looked over the precipice I started to think about what climbing has taught me.  Now to give you some context I enjoy climbing as a sport that gets me outside, uses every muscles in my body and improves my balance and coordination. But I’m not very good at climbing and I probably never will be. But something that all climbers have in common from the beginner to the professional is that we all fail a lot.

I know that I will often fail to complete a climb several times. But I’ll learn from my mistakes and eventually I’ll get better. Often a climbing move will seem impossible, but by thinking of different ways of balancing and distributing my weight, I’m often surprised to overcome the problem and make it to the top of the climb. I know that If I give up the first time I get stuck I feel disappointed with myself. It’s only by struggling on till I’m warn out, even if I don’t make it to the top I still feel like I’ve achieved something.  So climbing has taught me to have far greater perseverance than if I had otherwise took up the sport.

I remember going to see a climber named Andy Kirkpatrick speak a couple of years ago and talking about this same mentality of perseverance.  He continuously repeated the saying, if you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried hard enough.  I find him an interesting guy as he is a working class, educational drop-out who went on to become a professional climber and a successful author.  You can watch his amusing TED TALK here.

So the ability to fail is something I have in common with professional climbers, the main difference is, that their tolerance of failure is probably far higher than mine.  They may well practice a single move on a climb for hours on end, until they succeed.  By which time I’ve probably got worn out, fed up and gone to the pub.

The one thing that I don’t share with professional climbers is the right mentality towards climbing.  I don’t like falling off, which makes me far more risk adverse than climbers who are better than me.  I know this is one thing that I’ll always struggle with and it’s  one of the main things that holds me back.  So how can I overcome this and take more risks?  The first step is training, this gives any athlete a confidence in their own abilities.  The second step is mental preparation.   I don’t do this in a formal way.  But I always look at a climb and mentally rehearse the moves before hand, so I know where my equipment will go and I think about how I will move my body on the more difficult sections.  These rehearsals give me confidence in my own abilities and this gives me a positive outlook from the moment I start the climb.  This is the same process that all sports people go through.  But climb provides a great example of sports psychology due to greater risks involved in the sport.

It’s this ability to be able to persevere and to use techniques to mental prepare and overcome our fears, that is the great lesson that sport has to teach our children.  As a teacher I hate it when children give up straight away or use the dreaded words “I can’t do it”, but through playing sport children learn to fail.  It’s the nature of sport that usually their is only one winner and so most people fail.  But through playing sport children can learn that it is OK to fail.  We can learn something by failing.  We can still enjoy the game and success will mean much more if we had to overcome problems to get there.

A good resource to find out your own mental strength and find out about techniques that proffesional athlete use is the Michael Johnson pressure test.  I think when teaching sports we should be thinking about children’s mental resilience.  It’s important for children not only to analyse their physical performance, but also their mental performance.  We can compare their performances with  many example of professional sportsmen like Andy Murray’s Wimbledon final, to show that failure is a part of life.  Great sportsmen often fail far more through their lives than they succeed.

Problem solving ideas

 Team building ideas

This is a simple warm up to get children to develop their pace and ability to change direction.  It also develops friendly competition.

This warm up is ideal for children in groups of around 12 people.  Ask the group to line up in the middle of the playground.  Then point out two lines at either end of the the playground or use cones to mark out two lines.  Number each line 1 or 2.  Then when you call out a number the group must run up to the marker and then back again.  The last person to make it to the marker and back is out.  Continue, until one person is left.

To keep the children who are out active you could introduce a forfeit, such as the children have to run once around the playground before watching the rest of the activity.

Here is a PE idea, which is designed to improve children’s ability of Marking other players and increase their awareness of space.

First you’ll need to set some boundaries for this activity.  Children will need just enough room so that they can run around freely, but are still close to each other.  Then you’ll need to explain the warm up, you’ll need to demonstrate this warm up idea, if not children won’t quite get it.  The concept is each child chooses another person to be their dragon, but they don’t tell anyone who their dragon is.  Then when you start the activity you have to get as far away from your dragon as possible, while still staying within the boundaries of the area.  You’ll find that as everyone has different dragons it prompts a lot of running and dodging to really get as far away from your dragon as possible.

When children have had a go for a few minutes and got the concept, I then introduce the shields.  Again ask each child to pick someone (a different person to the dragon) and they are now their shield.  The idea now is to still keep away from your dragon, but try and get your shield in between you and your dragon to protect you.

This is my jazzed up version of a relay race to warm your class up, a good one for younger children, but it will work with any age group.  It is designed to add a bit of fun into your lesson, help develop your classes throwing skills and introduce a friendly competitive spirit.

Resources:
4 Hoops per team
Bean Bags
A few cones

First split your children into teams as you would for a normal relay and give each team some bean bags.  You then need to position a row of 4 hoops  directly in front of each relay team.  These are the targets.  Before they run the relay, each team member must throw a bean bag towards the hoops.  The target hoop is the furthest away as this is obviously the hardest to hit.  Now explain to the class that each team member will throw the bean bag and then run to the other end of the playground and back. Where the bean bag lands will determine how you run, see the examples below.

A Miss - Run like a frog.  Children hop all the way there and back making a ‘ribbit’ noise.

First Hoop - Run like a chicken, children must flap their wings and cluck and crouch down as they go to the other end and back. (You can also make them lay an egg at the other end)

Second Hoop - Run like a monkey. (My personal favourite) Children hop and jump to the other end scratching their armpits and make the obligatory monkey chattering noise.

Third Hoop - Run like an elephant, children can run, but they must hold their arm out in front of them as a trunk.

Fourth Hoop  – Run like a cheetah children sprint to the other end and back, they can growl and  roar if they can manage it!

Variation:

Use progressively smaller hoops to make this relay harder for older children.
After we have played it once, I like to get my children to suggest their own animals.
Use a scoring system to add an element of competition.  5 points for the furthest hoop, 4 points for the next closest and so on.  I reserve 1 point for missing, but throwing it in the right direction.  This adds the opportunity to incorporate a bit of mental arithmetic into the lesson.

Other PE warm ups

In this post I just wanted to recommend a few resource ideas  that you may find useful as ways of enhancing your PE lessons. As a primary school teacher I’m a non specialist and so they only way to achieve quality across a range of curriculum areas is by sharing good practice and ideas.  That’s the underlying principle behind this blog and why I write about one specific area.  So here are some resources that will be useful in providing better quality lessons.

The back bone of my PE lessons is the Top cardsthese are a resource brought out by Sport England and I find them invaluable. They are aimed at primary school teachers and  I went on a few of the relevant training sessions, that accompanied the cards.  But I think they have a lot to offer as a resource on their own.  They have quick points for progression, which is an invaluable reminder and essential for primary teachers, who don’t specialise in PE.  They also have an outdoor and adventurous card set.  These cards accompany the topic that gave me the name of this blog.  On this blog I try to write about original ideas and so my blog is a compliment to these cards and vice versa.

I often use concept cartoons in my science lesson, but I have never thought about them being a potential PE resource.  Well it appears that there are some on the market and a few can be downloaded  for free.  As a primary teacher I think the free sample is great and would meet all of my needs.  They provide an extra talking point in class and will help children make links between PE and other subject areas.  But it is a resource that children could get tired of if it is overused,  so the paid resource may be reserved for the PE specialists.

I’ve always been a fan of the TV program big cat diary and the presenter Simon King is an expert wildlife cameraman and naturalist and I love his enthusiasm for the outdoors.  So I was pleased to find his website is a great educational resource.  He has put his media skills to good work to produce some great videos that introduce map reading and are well worth a look.  They are of a high quality and are well worth a look.  They would be suitable for older children, but I think go into a bit too much depth for most primary school needs.

I thought I’d mention a few websites that have a number of general PE ideas that have a few good tips, but I don’t think any of them quite do primary PE justice.  Some of these sites have a couple of ideas, which I mention on this site.  On my site I try to blog about ideas that I have already tried and found to work, so there is bound to be a bit of overlap.  I hope that this site  compliments these others rather than replaces them.

Teaching Ideas  Primary Resources  These sites have a few general warm up ideas.  One of the better PE resource sites is PE Resources a good bank of ideas for different sports.  If you require more information about orienteering the best place to start is British orienteering, this is written for the sport and so doesn’t have much to offer for primary classroom ideas.

Other Posts

The Stretch

This is a simple challenge that is a good way to start off your team building sessions.  Challenge all of your children to get as far out from the playground as possible from the start line.  The tricky part is they are not allowed to loose contact with the start line.  They can be connected to another person or an item of clothing.

At the first attempt the children will just stretch out into one long line.  After that they may try  other ideas such as lying down to try and get further out.  Then they may try using clothing as links between each person (obviously a few limitations will need to be set here).

Variation

You could make this activity a little more exciting, by placing a prize at the other end of the play ground and set the task up so that they have to retrieve the item.  This could be completed as a team challenge or as a whole class activity.

Minefield

This problem solving activity is all about getting your group across from one side of the minefield to the other.  You will need 25 markers for the minefield, I’ve used chairs before, but P.E. spot markers would work the best.  Then explain to your class the following rules.  You are only allowed to step on the spots.  If you step on a mine your team goes back to the start.  If you step on the floor your team goes back to the start.  You must get your whole team across the mine.  

The solution is for the group to memorise the route and give each other directions to make it across.  This activity works best with a group of around 10 children, for a whole class you could set up 2 minefields.