Welcome back to the 20 days of summer school physical education series! If you are just joining this series, stop right now and check out Summer School Physical Education: Day 1. What Works and What Doesn’t.

The post above details what I will be talking about day to day, and how it can help you improve your social distancing physical education classes in the fall. It also lays out my class size, class time frames and space I am able to use.

If you are currently teaching summer school physical education, please leave comments on what works for you! I love collaborating, so let me know what you’re up to.

For yesterdays refresher check out Day 12 to see other fun net games that we played.

Activity #1: Weight Room – FN

Fitness notebooks going strong. Today both classes went. It’s a rainy day, so we enjoyed the cool air conditioning.

Looking around today, I couldn’t help but feel so proud of my kids. The students who enjoy weight lifting work so hard. They show each other new exercises, and help their partners count reps. The creativity I have seen over the last two weeks when we get in the weight room, brings the personal trainer out in me.

Today I was watching my leader from my morning class just destroy (in a good way) his medicine ball workout. Then one of my other morning student was doing a complete chest workout with machines and free weights. It makes me want to jump back into actually training clients. I can see their determination. And the fact that so many of my students (both classes) take their notebooks seriously, and I can see their workouts progression when I check them, make me a happy PE teacher as well as personal trainer.

Even my cardio crew, picked it up today! I always give them a choice on what and how they want to work out, and I noticed especially in my afternoon students pushing themselves intensity wise on the cardio machines.

If they needed to regroup and breath they would just slow themselves down.

We like the weight room, because althought we have to wear our masks, their performance is striktly individualized. I tell them to be mindful of their bodies reactions to certian things. They’ve figured out their limits.

What Works:

Time and patience. We’re figuring this out, and as I said above today I just got such a huge feeling of pride for my kids. They are literally going to school during a global pandemic and they are killing it.

Their rule following attitude in the weight room for safety, distance, mask wearing and everything I have been nagging about for the last 13 days is remarkable to see. So when I say “what works” and then write time and patience, I mean exactly that. This fall your students will test the limits with what they can and cannot do. Yelling, punishments and frustration is not going to get you anywhere (I didn’t do any of this). Get on their level, and let them know you’re in the same boat as them. I look at both my classes as my little morning and afternoon team. And we are getting through it together.

My patience with them lets them know I understand them, and allows them to respect me. Can you feel my gratitude through this post! And I’m only on activity 1!

Activity #2: Team Tennis

When I say team, I mean a few nets had to play 3 on 3, because of our numbers to nets ratio.

I let students pick their own doubles or triples partner/group. Since we are in the gym today playing, we set specific boundaries. They are not perfect, but I am fortunate to have two groups of very fair people. No arguments over boundaries occurred, and if kids weren’t sure, we’d just redo the play. Tomorrow we get to head to the actual tennis courts so rules will be enforced more intently.

What Worked:

They have been waiting for tennis, so even though we played in the gym most of my kids were really excited.

Depending on the activity, sometimes I pick their teams to split up skill levels. In today’s activities I let them pick whoever they wanted. This worked for my students in both classes that feel more comfortable working with their friends. Of course my tennis people teamed up, and played each other at first.

Everyone is still experiencing tennis at their own levels of difficulty or ease. But as my first class went on, I realized that my middle court players were so uninterested. I could tell they were not having fun. So I decided that, we would rotate. That way everyone got to play different teams. This helped somewhat, but I still had a few kids that definitly wanted tennis to be over.

On the plus side though, I saw two morning students who didn’t put any effort into volleyball come out of their shells. Who would have thought tennis was their sport?

Improvements or Modifications:

Like above rotate once you see boredom. The funny thing is that I noticed about 5 minutes into the first game.

I decided that the rotations would happen every 10 minutes.

Activity 3: Free Net Choice

Students can pick and choose what net they want to play on, and can move to different courts at any time.

• Court 1: Nitroball. Students could decide if they wanted to play the regular way or RR. (Round Robin version explained here #4)
• Court 2: Badminton. Same concept as court 1.
• Court 3: Tennis.

What Worked:

Not everyone loves tennis, not everyone loves badminton and not everyone loves Nitroball. So giving them a choice to be physically active while engaging in the activity/sport of their choice is always a good thing.

For the morning class, the majority of the kids went to Nitroball. The tennis players noticed their friends about to pick teams, and decided they wanted to join creating a 5 vs 6 game. Only 4 kids went to Badminton, so we decided that we would combine the tennis and Nitroball courts to play a giant game on the basketball court, and the badminton students can still enjoy their 2 vs 2 game on their own court.

My afternoon crew actually split up pretty evenly between all three courts. After about ten minutes though, the badminton group joined the Nitroball game. Just like the morning class we made a bigger court in the middle. Which still left room tennis players on the third court.

Improvements or Modifications:

I could have added more sports into the mix. We’ve already done modified basketball and soccer, so I could have set those courts up to. The only problem would be that there could be 1 person wanting to play tennis. If there are too many options with a small class, that could mess with who actually gets to do what.

Setting them up as stations and assigning a certain amount of kids to each one could have worked though. The only downfall is that the group that really wanted to play Nitroball, might not enjoy their time in class as much because they are stuck at the soccer station for however long.

Overall:

Here’s a funny story instead of a summary. I play music for both classes. I have been finding Teen Pop Hits playlists and letting it play. If there is an explicit warning on any song in the list, I just delete so there’s no chance of playing.

Well for some reason, I went to my own music and played some Alessia Cara song with a nice positive message, and COMPLETELY forgot that I was on my own music shuffle. I go to fix one of the nets, and next thing I know Cardi B’s song Money starts playing.

Anyone that knows that song, knows that there is absolutely no warning before the horrible language starts. So imagine my horror, when I sprint over to my music and just shut it off for the day. Luckily I don’t think any of my students really noticed, because they were all into whatever they were doing.

BUT STILL. It’s one of those “we can laugh about this later” type scenarios. Apple music clean playlists for teens from now on!!