Our district has been working had on Academic Vocabulary, and the importance of our students talking and using those vocabulary words. In addition to this, I am also in my second semester of ESL course work to complete my endorsement. So, you combine these two idea's together, and boy is my PE world different! It's good.....mostly good anyway! Warning: This is a pretty serious blog post!
What I'm realizing quickly is how little attention I gave my ELL students. This was definitely not intentional, I just didn't realize the importance of helping them. All students, regardless if they are ELL or not, need to have academic vocabulary. After shadowing our district ESL instructional coach for a day, I had my eyes opened to the importance of this. A statement that stuck with me was "the students language must grow, so that their reading skills can grow." Wow. This is powerful, and true!
So, my thought process has shifted a little bit. Never, ever, ever will I think that movement is not important in PE. After all, PE=Physical Education! But, I'm starting to see how we as PE teachers, need to not only teach our students TO move, but we also need to teach them WHY we move the way we do, and HOW we move the way we do. I believe there is a fine line between movement without purpose, and movement with learning. It's hard to find that line, at least for me. To "toot" my own horn just a little bit, a couple of weeks ago and instructional coach from our district came into my gym. After a discussion she said, your TEACHING your students, not just COACHING them. That has stuck with me, and motivated me even more. I want to make sure when we are working on our basketball skills that we are learning EVERYTHING we can about it. After all, who wants to play basketball, but not able to explain what it means to dribble or shoot? Facts are important too. Right? But, if we are teaching the facts, we are taking away from movement. But, by teaching these facts are we encouraging future movement? Maybe? Probably? I think we are. In addition, we are making these students better. Better physically, better cognitively, and better communicators. All of these three things are pretty darn important. I guess the tricky part for me is figuring out how to get all of this done. I have worked pretty hard at accomplishing this in the last couple of weeks.
We are almost done with our basketball unit. I am confident my students (most) can not only show you HOW to dribble, pass, and shoot, but they also can tell you WHY. They also can define and describe these words. They also can use them in sentences. We have worked hard on having little "chats" where I ask them to talk to their team about different parts of the game. I also make them answer using the vocabulary word in their sentence. Finally, I think they can tell you a little bit of history about basketball (see examples below). In the future, they can hopefully be confident in their knowledge of basketball, and hopefully use it as a way to stay healthy! If this happens, then I did my job.
I decided to dig deep into our basketball knowledge. I found an article about basketball online that was kid friendly.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pQJ6BPrCdSlz70lMDbfruYRcWK6gmT10j1-nWBhvpsg/edit?usp=sharing
I selected a paragraph and made it a google doc. I projected it on the wall, and allowed my students about 5-8 minutes to read it over and take notes, using their ipads. There were exceptions made, and I had to read the article a few times to some students. I reminded them the importance of what good notes look like. Then, I had them bring their ipads back to class. Their assignment, using only their notes, they needed to describe what they had read. I have a couple ELL students in 4th grade, whom I made sentence starters for. I also allowed a couple lower level readers the option of using my sentence starters. I quickly found, that most of the students could have benefited from the sentence starters. Overall, this assignment went well. Did we miss out on some minutes of movement, yes we did. But, did we learn a little bit more about basketball? Yes. Did we see, hear, read, write and DO? Yep, we did.
I still have some work to do, but I am okay with this "different" PE world. It's tough. I still believe in movement, it HAS to happen for our students to be successful and healthy. But, we can "teach" them a little more as well.
A few examples of my amazing students work!
4th Grader
Basketball is the only major sport that is completely American in origin.the
first professional league was the national basketball league,which formed
in 1898.the first teams emerged in the northeast in the turn of the 20th
century.these teams were instrumental in developing the game.
introducing key elements such as the bounce pass and the free throw
following a foul.basketball was invented in 1891 by Naismith.
5th Grader
Basketball is a amazing sport. It is the only major sport that is completely American origin. A smart man named Naismith invented basketball in 1891. They have basketball court every were even out side. Chicken wire and rope was placed around the courts to separate the players and fans. The first pro teams emerged in the turn of the 20th century. Nowadays the pro teams are named the NBA which stands for national basketball asoshuets (association).
4th Grader
First, I learned that the only sport that was completely American in Oigin was
basketball. Second, basketball was invented in 1891 by Naismith. Third, in the 20th
century the first professional teams came from the northeast. Next, the professional
teams introduced the bounce pass and the chess pass as well. Finally, back then in the
basketball games the basketball teams had to put a fence to keep the fans and the teams
sepreacted probably so the fans won't get hurt with the ball.
Ell Students using sentence starters. They are also working with a student who can speak Spanish and English fluently.
Get connected. Check out Google Drive. Keep on making a difference!
AB
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