Physical Education for the 21st Century
Grade 2 - Adventure Challenge
Central Idea:
Positive team members collaborate, take responsibility and face challenges with optimism
Learner Outcomes:
Interactions:
Discuss and set goals for group interactions
Cooperate with others
Assume responsibility for a role in a group
Identity:
Solve problems and overcome difficulties with a sense of optimism
Acknowledgement:
Andy Vasily
The Physical Educator
Lesson 1: Pre-Assessment:
This unit is all about teamwork. Putting the students into challenges where “inspirational” discussions may occur (inspirational as in heated) and leadership may flourish – positively or negatively. Throughout this unit, the challenges gradually became more difficult requiring greater use of the skills being addressed – refer to the Core Planning Document for more details. Key words that were addressed in this unit repeatedly were: collaborate, responsibility, optimism.
I started this unit off with the challenge, Crossing the River:
Break the class into 4 teams
Give each group 4-5 hula-hoops
They need use the hula-hoops as stepping stones to reach the other side of the playing area
If they step out of the hula-hoops, that group loses one hula-hoop
The second challenge I put the kids through was Capture the Gold:
Similar format to Crossing the River, however the teams are positioned in 4 corners of a playing area with a Hula-Hoop full of respective colored beanbags in the middle of the area
The 4 teams have to use their hula-hoops to reach the gold.
They pick up 1 beanbag/gold and go back to their base, deposit it and go back to get another one
I then closed the lesson reviewing the key points of the Central Idea and how they played a role in the 2 challenges.
Lesson 2:
We broke down the Central Idea a bit more today. We looked at what it means to collaborate and the effective ways of doing it. Referring to the Core Planning Document, you can see that “Group Decision Making” is a transdisciplinary skill we need to address (Refer to the Transdisciplinary skills in PSPE document for more information). I asked them questions such as, “What is a good way to discuss ideas? Do we get angry? Do we become shy? What is a good way to listen to ideas? What is a bad way to listen to ideas? What is a nice way to share your ideas? What is a bad way to share ideas? Since my kids are majority learning English as a second language I need to use language they are familiar with.
We put this into practice by redoing the two challenges prior since there were some teamwork issues that needed readdressing.
After they got a bit more capable with that challenge we went onto the next challenge: Caterpillar.
Similar format to the above challenges however, I dispersed 4 beanbags of 4 different colors around a playing area.
The teams are positioned in 4 corners of the playing area
Using their hula-hoops they navigate around the playing area picking up their respective colored beanbags
If a team member touches the area outside of the hula-hoop, their ‘caterpillar’ shortens by 1 hula-hoop
Lesson 3:
We started the class by reviewing the Central Idea and we delved deeper into what it means to be “responsible”. I asked questions such as, “what does being responsible mean? What is your responsibility in the classroom, at home, in PE? We then did a quick round of caterpillar.
After Caterpillar, I went over responsibility again and how it connects with the challenge. I then upped the ante and made the challenge harder – Blind Caterpillar.
Exactly the same as Caterpillar, however, this time, the 4 teams have to sort themselves into body parts of the Caterpillar. One head, a throat, a stomach, a tail, etc.
They cannot change position until after the round is complete.
To make it more difficult, I made the ‘head’ blind. Give the head of the caterpillar a blindfold.
The other team members cannot touch the head, go in front of the head but can only communicate with the blindfolded person verbally.
This is a great and enjoyable activity whilst learning about the importance of effective communication and teamwork.
We went over the different roles of this challenge and their responsibilities to the team.
Lesson 4:
This next lesson was dedicated to the key term “collaborate”. After reviewing the previous lesson and having a quick round of blind caterpillar we went to the next challenge – “Move the Ball”.
Students are broken up into teams of 4
The purpose of this activity is to move a ball around a playing area without using their hands but every team member needs to be touching it somehow.
The students need to come up with 3 different ways to move the ball.
Once they complete the initial 3 ways, they progress to the next level:
Level 1: A dodge ball
Level 2: A volleyball/soccer ball
Level 3: A Swiss ball
This challenge is great for collaboration because it is an accessible challenge and leaves a lot to the imagination. Discussions were plentiful and positive collaboration was occurring with many groups attempting a variety of ways to move the ball.
Lesson 5:
After reviewing the previous lesson, central idea and the key terms covered (collaboration and responsibility) we went onto the next key word – “optimism”. This is quite an advanced word for the students as they are mostly non-native English speakers. However after much gesticulation and using words such as leading words such as positive and happy, I think they got the idea.
After a warm-up challenge of Move the Ball we went onto the next challenge – Poison Ball.
Students break into teams of 4-5, depending upon numbers.
Without touching the ball, the students need to transport the ball around a set course.
They can only use a ring that the ball is resting on and 4-5 pieces of rope that students stretch out to transport the ball.
If the ball does fall, the students go back to their nearest checkpoint.
Modification:
Once the students have done a few rounds of Poison Ball and are demonstrating the two key words, you can modify this challenge by blindfolding one member of the team.
This challenge can be quite disheartening due to it’s difficulty but after 5-10 minutes of trial and error and some disgruntled students we gathered around to touch base and to see how optimism can work in this challenge.
Lesson 6:
We got to the halfway mark and judging from our many discussions at the start, middle and end of the lesson, the students seemed to have a good grasp of the ideas being brought forward.
We did 1 round of Cross the River, then Caterpillar, and lastly Move the Ball with a volleyball.
With 15 minutes left of the class, we then conducted the standard formative assessment to see how I could move forward with the unit:
Tell me everything you have learned so far in the unit:
The students could draw or write their response.
Since we are a 1:1 iPad school, students could use iBooks, iMovie, etc. to demonstrate their learning.
Lesson 7:
For the second half of the unit and to view the summative assessment, please click the link below:
Grade 2 - Adventure Challenge - Second Half and Summative Assessment