Summer School Physical Education: Day 8

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.

Activity #1: Outdoor Movement

As the days progress, I am starting to figure out what my students want, need and do well with.

Instead of having my students workout with a plan outside, I decided we would go out to get 20 minutes of fresh air with no masks at the start of both classes. My morning students loved it, because it was nice and breezy this morning and helped some of them get loose and ready for their 3 hour PE class.

It benefited the afternoon students, because most of them have just come from a 3 hour health class, and unstructured fresh air and movement could do them some good.

What Worked:

Like I stated above, it was good for both classes. Also, I decided 20 minutes would be enough time to prevent boredom.

Normally, we head outside in the beginning of each class to write in our fitness notebooks anyways, so this isn’t a huge change in the students normal routine. But, since it’s more relaxed and less time I do see this being something they will enjoy more often.

Improvements or Modifications:

Only a couple students got bored and sat down on the football field. Since they spend 3 hours with me and I introduced this as leisure outdoor time I didn’t mind at all.

In the fall when we go back to our regular scheduled classes of 30 min – 1 hour, I suggest cutting the time way down, or only do this every so often.

Activity #2 Weight Room

Now I still want my students to be accountable for tracking their workouts, and improving their fitness, so after our 20 minute outdoor time, we headed to the weight room.

The weight room time frame is normally about 40-50 minutes depending on the tone of the students (morning class is more energetic so we tend to spend a little longer here when allowed to go). But now since I will be adding 20 minutes of outdoor time, I cut the weight room down to 30 minutes. I watched to make sure everyone who is in the middle of a dedicated workout has enough time to complete their workouts, so I would let them know when they had 10 minutes left.

Activity #3: RipStiks

RipStiks were introduced to my students in Day 7, and both classes loved it. In my regular school year job, I give my 3-8th graders 6 classes (30 min each) to work on their skills.

At my 9-12th grade summer school I gave them an hour yesterday and an hour today. After they finished today, RipStiks will be done, but they’ll be allowed to use them when we have a little bit of free time.

Activity #4: Reaction Ball:

This is one of those instant activity games, that shouldn’t take too long, but it gets your students moving quickly.

How to play:

Two teams will stand on the baseline on either side of the basketball net. The first two players will stand with their backs to the rest of the gym facing their team. I will have a ball in my hand standing behind them and when I say GO, I’ll throw it somewhere in the gym. The two students facing off will not know what direction the ball was thrown, so when they hear the words GO, they must use speed and agility to get to the ball quicker than their opponent.

Both teams will be able to see where I threw the ball, so they can help their teammate, but the students will turn and take off so fast, it would be easier to find the ball instead of trying to find it from their teammates.

The person that gets the ball first scores a point for their team.

What Worked:

First, the students played this directly after a break, so all students were instructed to wash their hands or use hand sanitizer when it was time to play.

Also, after each round ended the ball was given back to me, where I was able to wipe it down with my stash of disinfectant wipes.

The students love the competitive nature of the game, and it was also exciting to see what each student up for their turn was going to do.

Improvements or Modifications:

You could use a bucket of different balls, and after each use, put the “touched” balls in a different bucket so no one reuses that ball.

You could also throw two balls at the same time. That way the students aren’t going in the same direction, therefore social distancing is guaranteed.

Activity #5: Ultimate Football

This is one of my favorite games, and I decided to try it since I was able to create small teams and an open space. I had two separate games going on at the same time.

How to play:

Team 1 and team 2 stands at opposite ends of the playing field. Team 1 kicks the ball to team 2, and when they catch the ball or pick it up the offense/defense starts. This game is NON CONTACT anyways, so I make sure to stress that now.

The person with the ball cannot move and has to throw the football to an open teammate who can move around. The ball has to make it’s way from one end of the field to the other without being dropped. If it is dropped it automatically becomes the other teams ball at the site of the drop. Offense is now defense and defense is no offence moving towards their end zone.

What Worked:

Teams were able to somewhat social distance since there were not as many players on each side. I split fields up by boys and girls, and my girls did a great job staying back while playing defense.

The boys played nicely, but I had two kids from each class go full force, playing very close man to man defense.

Improvements or Modifications:

Honestly, I won’t play this game again. I was hesitant at first, but since it is a non contact game anyways (no two hand touch or tackles involved), I thought we could give it a try. Even though their hands were washed and sanitized and I cleaned the balls off with disinfectant, I still think I would scrap this game until we have a better understanding of Covid-19 and how to teach PE during it.

I let the girls use a soft soccer ball for their item to throw instead of a football, which made the game more fun for them, so if in the future you figured out a better way to play this game, you can experiment with different balls.