Middle school teaching is said to be the hardest grades to teach. Especially in physical education class where the kids are experiencing different types of body changes. That can be really hard for a middle school student to showcase in front of a bunch of hormonal peers.

But I happen to LOVE teaching middle school PE. I felt like I had a really great system down when I taught in person and my students are amazing.

Unfortunately now that we are remote, the dynamic I had with my middle school students in person has changed drastically. They aren’t able to play full court basketball or ultimate football on the field with me.

Now, I have to reconstruct my entire yearly curriculum to ensure they are getting a solid physical education all while behind their computers.

Before we go any further, if you are interested in how I teach K-5 click on the links below:

• K-2 virtual physical activities
• 3-5 virtual physical activities

Google Classroom Setup For Middle School

Just like my 3-5 Google Classroom, my middle school Google Classroom is almost identical, although I do expect more high quality work from my 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

For instance, middle school is responsible for more writing in complete sentences. They are expected to read the directions, and follow them. In this case, the directions ask them to watch the 4 minute video and write five facts in complete sentences about what they learned.

All of my work given, relates to what we are doing that week. For the example below, the students were learning about the skill related fitness components, so I asked them to tell me what all six were and to give an example of each.

Encouraging Middle SChool To Do their Best Work:

I try to set them up for success by laying out the answer form, but you’d be surprised at how many kids don’t answer correctly. The example I am providing below was a response I sent to a student who answered the question completely wrong. His answer to the question above was “push ups, sit ups ,wall sits ,lunges,jumping jacks,.and squats”. I copied and pasted the students exact answer into this post…no changes. So as you can see below, I privately commented to the student trying to get them to redo their work, because they clearly did not read the directions nor watch the 1 minute video (that tells them the answers).

I started realizing that a lot of my middle school students did not want to take any initiative in their work. I respond to every single students work if they missed any points. And I give them until the due date (Thursday nights) to correct anything. Most of the time they leave their answers as is.

Then on the flipside of the students doing the work whether it’s great quality or not, there are the middle school kids who don’t turn anything in.

This is hard for me because I can understand that they aren’t used to turning in physical work in my PE class. I have asked them to show me their best effort and progress in the skills I teach in person to all of a sudden their main grade is based off of a YouTube video or Google Form I want them to complete.

Grading During Google Meet

Since some of the kids are struggling to turn in their work, or give me quality work worth full points, I had try something different when it comes to grades.

I decided that during their live Google Meets my middle school students would be able to earn participation points to pick up their grades. This was a huge turn around for a lot of them. When they come to class, keep their cameras on and actively participate during our activity they earn 5/5 points. If they keep their camera off or point it towards the ceiling so I can’t see them they don’t lose points, they just don’t get any.

Another way to give grades, is when we have 100 percent attendance, I give everyone in that class 2 extra credit points. It’s only happened once, but I’m hoping this will catch on and be an incentive for them to come to class more often.

Virtual Activities for Middle School

Earlier I mentioned that I love teaching middle school, but I can tell you with all honesty that I would rather teach them in person than online. Even though I am one of the rare teachers that LOVES remote teaching.

I have been struggling a little bit with getting my 8th graders to be excited about class, or participate. Just today, I had to change up the way I grade their live PE on our Google Meets, because kids were joining when I would take attendance, and then leave immediately. They weren’t getting participation points, but they weren’t getting 0’s either.

Another thing that was happening was as soon as we would start activity, they would turn their cameras off, or face them towards the ceiling so I can’t see them. It got to the point that last week, I ended class pretty disappointed in them due to a few students laying in their beds texting. To me that is extremely disrespectful. I ask for very little from them, and a few of them started taking advantage. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the kids that show up and do an amazing job.

So I came up with the below expectations, and moving forward this is how they will be graded during our Google Meets:

Live PE Class Outline For Middle School

Middle school only gets 35 minutes with me every Wednesday. And 7th and 8th grade I have to take a few different forms of attendance, but for the most part all three classes are structured the same.

Our class schedule is outlined as follows:

• Attendance
• PE Content
• Activity
• Q&A Recap
• Closing Information/Questions

Attendance

Well this is self explanatory. I always let the kids enter the meet about 20 minutes early, so as they enter I immediately mark them as present. Even if they leave the chat at any point, the way we are to handle attendance is that if you see them or hear from them at all that day you mark them present.

By starting early, saves time during our Meet. Because once we actually start I only need to spend about 20 seconds confirming everyone’s attendance.

Since I don’t take attendance for sixth grade, we usually spend the first few minutes of class sharing good news.

PE Content

This is the part of the lesson where I share my Google Slides with the kids. Each week I present new information to them, that builds off the previous week.

For example, today we learned about HIIT training.

I shared the above three slides, and explained what each slide detailed. Demonstrations are always done along with my talking points. Sometimes, I will even have the kids stand up with me and walk them through specific movements such as high intensity exercises vs. low intensity exercises.

Activity

After we talk through the couple slides I present each class, we complete a workout that relates. Keeping with the same theme of talking about what my students learned today, I shared with them a 30 minute HIIT workout. We didn’t get through the whole thing, but they did enough movement to understand the concept of HIIT.

I liked this video because the trainers kept the kids engaged, and it was a lot of fun.

Another video I really like that I will be sharing next week is from the YouTube channel Fitness Blender.

The only downfall about their videos is there is no music. I like to find videos that have music playing to keep the kids engagement levels as high as possible. It can get kind of boring if there is a dead silence while you are working out at home with everyone one mute. Even though I talk through some of the workout to reiterate what I want them to understand, who doesn’t like to have music in the background!?

Q&A Recap

Checking for understanding is done during the slide show presentation, but more importantly after the hands on activity. Normally I will share my Google Slides back on the screen and ask the students critical thinking questions that relate.

Sometimes I will ask them to demonstrate different types of exercises learned such as high impact vs low impact modifications. For example, in today’s lesson I asked different kids one by one to show me a specific exercise and then modify it to make it low impact, or intensify it to make it high impact. I also had all the girls stand up and perform a specific exercise together, and then had the boys stand up after and had them modify it and vise versa.

Closing Information/Questions

This is the time of our live PE session where the middle school students can ask me any questions about the lesson, or upcoming work due.

Weekly reminders are given to turn their 1-2 weekly assignments in by Thursday night if they haven’t already. I will tell students to go back and check their private comments if they already turned their work in, because chances are they may have to redo or add to their work to get full credit.

Once all information is given and questions are answered my middle schoolers are able to leave the Google Meet.

Closing Thoughts:

Although this post was not filled with tons of different resources, I hope you find it helpful. I would rather talk about how I still struggle with certain aspects of my classes, and what I am doing to fix the issues. To me that would be beneficial and worth reading.

Please leave comments or feedback if you are a middle school physical education teacher. All comments are welcome!