Virtual physical education activities can be found in detail here! If you are new to my blog and teach grades younger than 3-5, check out my most current post Virtual Physical Education Activities for K-2 to see how I make virtual PE easy for the littler ones.
Or if you teach middle school check out Virtual Physical Education Activities for Middle School.
Also, you can find a quick summary of how many days a week I teach and what my virtual PE schedule looks like here.
Before we get to the good parts like the different virtual physical activities I do during our Google Meets, I want to explain how I set my 3-5 Google Classroom up.
Since I teach K-8, I have one Google Classroom for K-2, another one for 3-5 and lastly 6-8 share a classroom. Below you will see how 3-5 is set up and how students are to access work and get grades.
Google Classroom Setup for 3-5:
There are similarities between the K- 2 and 3-5 Google Classrooms, but a little more work needs to be done from the older students.
The first things kids and parents will see on my Google Classroom stream is the “How To Navigate My Classroom” section.
There is also a video of me explaining the exact same thing to the kids/parents where I share my screen and am able to visually explain expectations.
Physical Activities and Classwork:
Since I only see my 3-5 grades on Tuesdays, I have my Google Classroom set up where my students can do asynchronous work the rest of the week.
As you can see it is very similar to K-2. Every day the kids do not see me on Google Meet, they have different virtual physical activities to do on their own. It always relates to what we are learning that week. I find activities that work with all three grade levels, but may change virtual physical activities between grades when we meet on GM.
Each PA builds on something we worked on this week, or the previous weeks. In the picture above I am combining the health related fitness components which we worked on in weeks previously, with the skill related fitness components that we worked on more recently.
If at any time the students want to look back at previous virtual physical activities or information on classwork, they can shuffle through all of the topics on the side of their screen.
Graded Work
Since their virtual physical activities are not graded, you’re probably wondering how I keep track of work. Every week the students will have either a reflection to fill out, or have to watch a health video and answer a specific question that relates.
Notice the explosion emoji before the words What is a Calorie? That means that something is due to me. Every week it has remained the same. Students are familiar enough with my page that they know as soon as they see the explosion pop up Monday morning in their weeks work, that they must complete the assignment by Thursday night at 11:59pm. This gives me time on Friday to enter in grades.
Now what happens to the kids that don’t turn in their work? That is going to happen and it may happen often.
What I do is remind them to get their work in during our live sessions. By Friday I will know who turned in their assignments or not, and jot their names and grade down. Then without telling them, I let them earn their full points during our PE session. I may call on those students before others, or spend a little more time making sure they are engaged and participating in our activities.
The reason for this leniency is to ensure they pass my class with a well deserved grade. They might not be getting the help they need at home, and I cannot fault them for that.
After 9 weeks I can tell who is giving me their all in my class and who is trying to get by with doing the bare minimum. I also have to consider that my student’s went from not having to complete online assignments every week, to now that is how they get their main grade.
It doesn’t seem fair to those who struggle with reading and writing. That’s why the live participation check balances everything out for us.
Virtual Physical Activities for 3-5 on Google Meet:
After you have your classroom all set up it’s time for the fun part of your remote job. Teaching the kids online!
K-2 was very cross curricular dominant. And while I do carry over what the students learned in the classroom for grades 3-5, a lot of the content is more PE related.
For the middle grades, most the times they do the same activities, and I just change my verbiage to simpler terms for the younger kids. So I am going to group 3-5 together, but specify any differences that might occur such as the warm ups and stretching between them.
Live PE for 3-5 classes is structured as shown below:
- Good News
- Warm up
- Stretching/Flexibility
- PE Content/Activity
- Cooldown Breathing
Good News:
Who doesn’t like to start class with some excitement! First I ask if anyone wants to share, and I’ll call on the kids with their hands up one by one. And we have about a 10-15 second conversation each. If only a couple kids volunteer, I might call on random kids and ask them how their weekend was.
Good conversation flowing throughout their screens lets them know I care about them, and genuinely want to hear about their lives. Over time they have been wanting to share more and more.
We don’t spend any more than 3 minutes here, and a lot of the time kids come to class early so we get to sneak some extra chit chat into our Google Meets.
Warm up:
THIRD GRADE
Since my third graders are still my little babies to me, I tend to keep them on the same warm up track as 2nd grade. The YouTube channel PE Bowman that I have talked about in the K-2 virtual physical activities post, has been coming out with some new videos. I highly recommend subscribing to this channel.
Anyways, the warm up videos don’t always relate to the content, but are extremely fun and interactive. Since a lot of my students are based out of Detroit, I like to keep their classes relevant to their lives as well.
For instance, there is a local dance group called Fresh the Clowns who now tour all over the U.S. But the cool thing about them is that a lot of the kids have meet them at birthday parties, and I also brought them into the school for a dance assembly.
What I sometimes do is start them off with one of my favorite videos from Fresh the Clowns and tell the kids they can either copy the dance moves, make up their own or do some sort of movement like jumping jacks and squats for the full 1:44.
This group does all the popular dance moves of the younger generations and chances are your students may have heard of them already. If they haven’t check out their YouTube channel for some fun videos you can share.
FOURTH AND FIFTH GRADE
Fitness Blender YouTube channel has great 5 minute warm up videos. If I know I have a lot of content to cover, I will cut the video off halfway, but for the most part the students enjoy working through the whole warm up.
Another reason I like their channel, is because their demonstrations are easy to mimic. The narrator talks through every motion making it easy for kids to focus on the activity rather than keeping their eyes glued to the screen to try to figure out what the demonstration looks like.
Stretching/Flexibility
THIRD GRADE:
While working pretty closely with the 3rd grade teacher, she tells me that her students are struggling with odds and even numbers. So during our stretching that’s what we practice. This week the kids were called on one at a time to count to 30 by odds or evens.
They are doing so well!
Not only are they learning what muscles they are stretching as we go, they are getting practice counting while multitasking. We’re trying to keep them sharp!
FORTH AND FIFTH GRADE
We don’t do much skip counting in these grades, but we do focus more on the muscles. I will ask them where certain muscles are such as their quadriceps, triceps or abdomen and they have to point. then we stretch them. Simplifying each muscle is a must too!
When we do our quadricep stretch they should know in simpler terms they are stretching “the front of the leg” and hamstrings would be “the back of the leg”. Getting them familiar with where their muscles are is an important part of the PE curriculum.
As we have gotten further into our online PE class, they are more comfortable using the correct names for the muscles.
PE Content/Activity
This is the part of the classes where 3-5 does the same activities. Like I said earlier, I might use more age appropriate verbiage for each grade.
About 10 minutes into class, is when we dive into information I want them to learn about physical education. Normally I present this information through google slides and share my screen.
As you can see from my Google Classroom set up, the content follows a specific order. In the beginning of the trimester we dove into the 5 health related fitness components. I found workouts that we could do that related to 1-2 different components a day.
More recently my kids have been learning about the skill related fitness components. It is somewhat early according to their age and grade, but most of them are currently on sports teams. Might as well help them understand how to get better in their specific sports.
One example video I want to share is a reaction time challenge below. All students need is two balled up pair of socks. I tell my kids if they don’t have the exact materials I am working with then to be creative. Dog toys, pencils, spoons or literally anything else that fits into their hands will work.
We spend some time practicing and I let the students practice off mute so we can all have fun with each other.
Another example of building on the skill related fitness knowledge would be the video below. I have been getting more specific with certain sports so they don’t lose interest in just working out. While still being able to get away with limited resources such as soccer balls, basketballs or volleyballs. This video includes a soccer ball. My students are always able to do the exercises without any equipment, but if they have the ball or something like it then grab it!
Last week, we finished the skill related fitness theme. I have now moved onto different types of training. HIIT workouts are SO EASY for you to do with your kids, and you can even get creative and have them construct their own once they understand what HIIT actually is.
Last year, I introduced HIIT workouts to my middle schoolers. But now that we have to stay remote, I’m finding HIIT can be taught at an earlier in age.
Here are my two favorite videos I have used for my 3-5 graders today:
- Super Fun KID’S Workout: 8 Minute HIIT Fitness Class for Kids
- SH1FT HIIT FOR KIDS: 20 Minute Workout for Kids
Right before we cool down with our breathing techniques, we do a mini Q&A to see if they retained what they learned.
Cool Down Breathing
Now that the kids are stronger, healthier and smarter after our thirty minute class full of virtual physical activities, it’s time to bring that heart rate back to a resting state.
Five deep breaths in and five deep breaths out lead by myself. I haven’t had one complaint about this 30-40 second cool down yet. It gets the kids ready to head back to their classroom teachers Google Meet.
Closing Thoughts:
The middle grades for me are fun, because you can see them mature right in front of you. They are getting more active in sports, and starting to see your class as a platform to improve on their skills.
Yet they are still young enough to play Balloon Pop warmup games and have the best time.
No matter what age you teach, having a clear organized plan per day, per week, per month, per semester/trimester is going to take your teaching into overdrive. You will enjoy teaching more, and your kids will enjoy your class just as much if you have a clear cut plan on what you’re doing and where you’re going.
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