Focus

To provide an alternative physical activity within the Health and Physical Education program, for year nine and ten (VELS level 6) students who do not wish to participate in “sport” based activity.

Rationale

During our preparation for the Case and Commentary assignment, our Praxis Inquiry Teams shared cases from our own practice, as well as discussing cases written by other students and provided to the entire group. One of these cases described a physical education class where a few students caused trouble by jogging around the entire campus rather than sticking to the usual route around the oval. The commentary of the case suggested possible reasons for this, and the members of my Praxis Inquiry team also had ideas about why this may have happened and how the pre-service teacher could prevent it from happening again.

I continued to think about this case long after the class discussion was concluded. When reading the case I felt my loyalty being drawn to the student who seemed to be the worst “offender” rather than to the teacher. I imagined that his reasons for avoiding the beginning of that class may have been similar to my reasons for avoiding many physical education classes during my own time as a school student. The teacher had described him as being less coordinated than the other students, and lacking the skills necessary for the ball game she was planning for the class. How unfair to punish this student for wanting to avoid the humiliation of being picked last for the teams, and experiencing failure at something he didn’t enjoy. What alternatives had we missed during our discussion? I have planned this unit in response to my own thoughts about the alternatives.

“All too often when it comes to physical education of children we steal away this world of the child by dictating games to them. We do this under assumption that it is good for all children to learn about our major sports through lead-up games involving kickball… [etc]. Most of these games, however, are characterized [sic] by

• large groups

• lack of participation

• elimination

• stress on winning

Those [students] who are not ready because of…

• interest

• motivation

• strength or size

• skill

… often turn to a search for stimulation in activities other than the game. These symptoms can be seen when children begin daydreaming, playing with dandelions in the grass, shoving, pushing [etc].” (Graham, Holte/Hale, & Parker, 1980)

To avoid “lack of participation,” students will work in pairs and small groups for most activities and spend only minimal time waiting for their turn. Games and activities will not involve elimination rounds or a focus on winning. Working in small groups will allow students to be teamed with others of compatible strength or size, though unlike sports most activities will not be affected by this. Student will be encouraged to choose their own groups, though random groupings and teacher-selected groupings will also be utilised.

As this unit will be offered as an option within the Health and Physical Education program, there will be a focus on body awareness and fitness. Cleary and Zappa (2001, p. 64) describe fitness as “the ability of the body to meet the demands placed upon it in the course of a person’s life.” Rather than looking at fitness from a sport perspective, this unit will look at the ways individuals can assist their bodies to meet the demands of their current lifestyle aspirations. There will be a particular focus on the physical demands of acting and performing.

Organisation

The unit will run for five weeks, concurrent to the Health and Physical Education unit. It is assumed that the timetable is organised so that two or three PE classes are running during the same block on the timetable. Students will be able to “sign-up” for this program and will also be selected by PE teachers were deemed appropriate. The class size would optimally be around 20 students.