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Objective: Adapted from the game In the Zone (Hughes, J. 2002. No Standing Around in My Gym. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics), Catch Me if You Can emphasizes teamwork and strategy through a high-energy passing and catching manipulative game. -
From my book PE2theMax II: Stepping up the “Game” in Physical Education, the game of Action Packed provides a great way to introduce and/or integrate multiple fitness and social activities that will allow students to demonstrate competency in fitness skills, in the attempts to also enhance persistence, team- work, and camaraderie. -
Objective: To reinforce spatial awareness, fleeing and dodging, throwing for accuracy, and hula hoop manipulatives in the wacky, action-packed game of Hooper’s Hulas. -
Objective: to provide students various ways to develop and improve aim and accuracy while learning to manipulate various throwing objects. -
From my book PE2theMax II: Stepping up the “Game” in Physical Education, in the game of Going Cuckoo, students must cooperatively and quickly work together to get all of the misplaced Cuckoo eggs safely to their mother’s nest, while reinforcing throwing, catching, hand-eye coordination, and cardiovascular fitness. Scenario: There are two common kinds of cuckoos in North America, the blue-billed cuckoo and the red-billed cuckoo. Bird watchers have observed and learned that cuckoos do not like to care for their young. The sad truth is that cuckoos actually lay their eggs in another bird’s nest and leave them to be hatched and cared for by another bird. To avoid the risk of extinc- tion, a group of bird watchers have decided to team up and find the misplaced cuckoo eggs and safely transfer all the fragile eggs to their natural mother’s nest. -
Objective: This is a fast-paced aerobic game that focuses on the movement competencies of dodging and fleeing. -
Objective: A strategy-based game where teamwork, decisiveness, and communication skills are critical to win it ALL or walk away with NOTHING (accept having fun with your friends and getting active)! -
Objective: This game improves bowling for accuracy while placing students in nonstop defensive situations. -
Objective: Students will practice and improve bouncing for accuracy, spatial awareness, defensive strategy, and cardiovascular endurance in the high- energy game of A Drop in the Bucket. -
This is an excerpt from my book PE²: Double the Physical + Double the Education = Double the Fun. Included are some additional teaching tips to assist you in time management and grouping strategies. These strategies are especially helpful if you teach large classes of 50+. -
Each class that arrives to physical education must enter the gym, get into personal space, and await the teacher’s instructions. A student “caught being ready” (sitting still, listening, etc.) is chosen every class to go to the stage to be the Stretch Captain. Variation/Option: since most students want to be chosen, I’ve added a new stipulation in order to be selected as the Stretch Captain. In this variation I ask “who knows their multiples of 4 or 6 or 8, etc. This limits the number of students who raise their hands and challenges those students who do not know their multiples to learn them so that they may be chosen for a future class. The Stretch Captain will read and lead each stretch from the list of stretches, while counting to 10 or whatever multiple is chosen times 10. Upon completion, the Stretch Captain will roll the fitness die to determine what fitness activity all students must perform. Note: the teacher can supplement any fitness activity if a fitness die is not available. This is a great incentive for entering the gym correctly because EVERYONE wants to be the Stretch Captain! -
Objective: All students will actively engage in the mysterious game of Trick or Treasure because what is unveiled could be a trick or could be a treasure. Trick or Treasure provides a fun, high-energy outlet for students to reinforce fitness skills, strategy and deception. -
Helpers of the Month Here is a fun incentive I use with my 5th graders who excel and demonstrate great attitudes in physical education. Helpers of the Month assist me in promoting behavior expectations to other students. This incentive utilizes 5th graders as physical education helpers in daily setup, cleanup, errands, and other classroom management needs. 5th Grade Student Teachers Here is a fun incentive I use with fifth graders who excel and demonstrate great attitudes in physical education. This program utilizes fifth graders as student teachers at various physical education stations for kindergarteners. -
OBJECTIVE: EcSTATIC Bowling is the advanced and more competitive version from the original game of EcSTATIC. Teams will race to complete the cooperative bowling and static balance challenges. AND as a bonus, holding static poses is great for building core strength! -
Objective: To elevate dance appreciation through unique, fun, and exciting rhythmic dance skills with the attempt to alleviating any preconceived negative feelings concerning dance. -
For decades, there has been a search for PE activities that blend academic and physical elements. With time being a huge factor, a balance must be achieved; physical intensity must not be diminished by time spent on verbal instruction. Could the answer to this balance be easy? Easy as PIE? INNOVATIVE WAY YOUR P.E. PROGRAM CAN: •Promote reading and math •Reinforce classroom content •Challenge students physically and mentally PHYSICAL: Students use lots of high energy locomotor skills, running, skipping, leaping etc, to find assigned letters and in the span of a few seconds use fine motor skills to place the ball on the word building tray. Correct throwing form and proper basketball shooting technique may be practiced as students must throw balls into the unique mixer goal. ACADEMIC: Beginning readers get extra practice in letter recognition, spelling high frequency sight words and word building. Established readers use subject specific task cards to reinforce classroom concepts in areas of English, science, nutrition, health, etc. The math concept of fractions is utilized as “just keeping score in a game.” COLLABORATIVE: Students work in teams and every team member has a role to play. Each team has a captain, a point guard and several letter “ninjas”. Teams compete for points by spelling words quickly and must work together. The elements of cooperation and competition are extremely effective in keeping students motivated and on task. The inventor of the game, Carol Cranford is a retired physical education specialist from Alabama. "Thank you for checking out this game. It is now a staple item in my physical education curriculum because my students love it". JD Hughes -
Virtual Field Day
The Virtual Field Day is an online, alternative Pre-K through 8th grade field day that contains 12 Minute to Win it Challenges. These movement-based activities will provide your students with a fun, yet challenging opportunity to participate in a new type of field day experience. This resource offers a Virtual Field Day document, 12 challenge activities, student rules and video submission information, along with equipment needs, teacher notes and scoring suggestions for each challenge. You can simply show my videos and use my scores or recreate your own videos and scoring. You can download it in a Word document so that you can modify, cut and paste, and basically do what you need to fit your program's needs. Minute to Win it Challenges: A video will be posted to provide you with the rules, equipment needed and a demonstration of how to perform each challenge- Tennis Racket Challenge
- Rope Jump Challenge
- Frisbee Throw Challenge
- Rundown Challenge
- Basketball Shooting Challenge
- Marshmallow Move Challenge
- Penny Tower Challenge
- Bottle Flip Challenge
- Hoop in and out Challenge
- Wall Ball Challenge
- Grocery Bag Juggle Challenge
- Cartwheel Challenge
- Bonus: badges for every event that can be emailed
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These are a few hands-on tools I use to engage students in the learning process. I simply tie them into a lesson/game that fits well with the tool I'm using. Although there is a small investment involved to add these products to your equipment, it's interesting to see how captivated students are when they can actually see and feel the effects of an occluded artery, or how much sugar and fat are in the foods they eat. Students also are amazed at the fat chunk and that although it weighs the same as muscle, it takes up twice the space, plus it is gross to feel. The Pack of Toxic Tar Display contains two removable cigarettes filled with gooey "tar." The tar in these two cigarettes represents the amount of toxic tar that a smoker receives from smoking one pack of cigarettes. -
Nonverbal cues are a great time management tool I often times implement in physical education to avoid disrupting the flow of learning when instruction is being given. Implementing the nonverbal cues allows me to quickly address and alleviate many problems instead of stopping the class, addressing the problem, and re-starting the class. For example, I’m demonstrating a skill and I notice a student who is talking to a friend; instead of calling them out and disrupting class, I simply make eye contact with that student and do the “cut it out” cue without hindering my demonstration. -
PE2theMax II: Stepping up the Game in Physical Education is the 3rd physical education book from J.D. Hughes' 7-book series, author of the best-selling No Standing Around in My Gym and PE2theMax. This guide includes 30 games and dances in an easy-to-use spiral bound book. All games and activities have been classroom-tested and used successfully with children ages 4 to 13.
