Grade 2 - Adventure Challenge

Continued: Lessons 7 to 12

Central Idea:

• Positive team members collaborate, take responsibility and face challenges with optimism

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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​

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Acknowledgement:

Andy Vasily

The Physical Educator

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Lesson 7:

• The students seem to have a good grasp of what it means to be respectful and to be part of a team, however there is still the occasional conflict that occurs. Looking at the Core Planning Document, the homeroom unit is difficult to integrate with but as mentioned previously, we can integrate by focusing on the concepts, learner profile and attitudes.

• We looked at how our three key terms are connected to the unit. I asked questions such as:

  • “How does responsibility play a role in our challenges?”

  • “What do we talk about when we collaborate for our challenges?”

  • “Why does optimism help us in our challenges?”

• Some of these questions did need further clarification with some students but they were starting to understand the unit a bit more.

• We moved onto a step up from Poison Ball to a creatively named, Noodle Ball.

  • Similar to Poison Ball but we replaced the rings and ropes with swimming noodles, about half a meter each.

  • The students need to transport the respective object around a set course using the noodles, not their hands.

  • They transport the same object three different times using three different ways of using the noodles.

  • There were different levels of difficulty:

    • Transport a beanbag

    • A dodge ball

    • A volleyball

Lesson 8:

• After last lesson, the students were starting to really grasp the big ideas being addressed in the unit.

• We looked at the concept of ‘causation’ a little bit more today. We broke down what it means to be a great team:

  • Being open to new ideas

  • Staying positive

  • Communicating nicely, etc.

• I asked them, “What happens to the team when we don’t do these things?” They kids replied:

  • “The team is not good anymore.”

  • “We lose the challenge.”

  • “We start fighting.”

• With these great responses in mind, I gave them a difficult challenge, the Blind Beanbag Challenge:

  • The class is broken down into 4 teams and move into one of the four sides of the playing area.

  • 4 beanbags of 4 different colors are dispersed around the playing area.

  • 1 team member is blindfolded and has to navigate the playing area to reach 1 bean bag of their color and return it back to the respective team’s base.

  • Meanwhile, the rest of the team can skirt around the outside of the playing area communicating directions to the blindfolded team member.

  • There usually is a great deal of rule infringement in this activity – intentional or unintentional – so it is important to stay on top of the students, otherwise the point of the challenge is lost.

Lesson 9:

• After reviewing the great discussion we had yesterday, I really wanted to get the kids more active and put their new skills into a more dynamic challenge – Team Pac Man.

  • In Team Pac Man, all students can only run on the lines of the field.

  • One team are the catchers, they have 1-2 minutes to determine a strategy to catch all the others.

  • The other students have to spread themselves out across the field and avoid being caught – but they can only run on the lines.

  • When a person is touched by the catcher, they sit down on the line exactly where they got tagged – they are now blocking that line.

  • Only the catchers can pass the blocked path, the others cannot pass.

  • The catchers are timed.

  • Fastest team to catch everybody wins the challenge.

Lesson 10:

• Continuing on with the dynamic challenges, I introduced Team Shark to the kids today.

  • The field has 4 safe areas (islands) for the ‘people’.

  • The catchers in the rest of the field (water) are ‘sharks’.

  • The people need to run from one island to another avoiding the sharks.

  • The class is broken up into 4 teams.

  • 1 group being the sharks.

  • The other 3 being the people.

  • There is one person in the shark team that is God.

  • God cannot catch people but can make the islands disappear by saying “3-2-1-NO ISLAND”.

  • The people then need to scatter to the other islands for safety.

  • There needs to be communication and teamwork between the God and Sharks to make this work to their advantage.

  • Once a person is caught by a shark, they are out.

Lesson 11:

• This lesson was dedicated to reviewing the challenges we worked on since the formative assessment:

  • Noodle Ball

  • Team Pac Man

  • Team Shark

• Between the challenges, we touched on the key terms of the unit and how they played a role in our activities:

  • Responsibility

  • Optimism

  • Collaboration

Lesson 12:

• We ended the unit with their final challenge of the unit - The Rope Challenge:

  • Students broke into 4-5 groups

  • They were each given 5 pieces of rope, roughly about 1 meter long each

  • Using only 1 hand each, students needed to tie the ropes together to make 1 long rope

  • Afterwards, I told the students to form 5 different shapes, can be anything that’s relatively simple to make – square, circle, rocket ship, house etc.

  • Once all the groups completed the shapes they all came together to make one long rope and made 3 different shapes – again, using only 1 hand each.

• Once the challenge was complete, students completed this assessment:

  • 21PE – PYP – PSPE – Grade 2 – Adventure Challenge – Summative Assessment

• To help with the last question, I had the Central Idea on the board with all the keywords we discussed. 

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Questions, comments, click here.

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