By Steve Jefferies on Saturday, May 05, 2001 - 11:13 am: Edit

Physical Education teachers typically see their students so infrequently that I wonder if it is reasonable to expect us to teach more than movement-based and health promoting activities. While I am convinced that movement activities can be utilized to teach all types of "classroom" content (I don't like the phrase "classroom content" but prefer it to "academic content"), I tend to think that it should be the regular classroom teachers who do more to integrate movement into their learning activities. Today's students spend far too much time sitting passively in their classrooms and would respond with much more enthusiasm if teachers utilized movement as an instructional strategy. It seems to me that in the future, physical educators could serve a role in our schools not only as teachers of movement skills, but also as movement resource coordinators for regular faculty. With their expert knowledge of movement, physical educators are ideally placed to be able to help other faculty develop activities to enhance the learning of all types of classroom content. What do you think?

By Marina Bonello (Marina) on Saturday, May 05, 2001 - 05:13 pm: Edit

From Marina (Malta)
Steve I will share with you my experience in my school. With 2 lessons a week (30min) for the 4-6 year old pupils and a double period (60min) + 30 minute lesson for the 7 year olds, yeah I sure agree with you that time is a premium. Yet I find myself integrating vocabulary, science, health, techcnology into my lessons in a way which I really think ultimately benefits my PE program content whilst making it more meaningful and experiential for the young learners. Since I have 16 classes, I meet periodically with the Grade teachers to ensure continuity with what is being done in the classroom- in deed there are some health/science compenents which I tackle in the PE lesson and the class teachers help me by consolidating the theme in the classroom.
I find that bringing "academic" content into the PE lesson does have great benefits -there are some units of work which through PE we have managed to provide an active and constuctivist approach which has appealed to the pupils so much that they have gone home to further their active practice and also shared with their families the "cool" things they have learnt in PE. Indirectly it has served advocacy purposes - some parents have come to parents' day telling me that their child was explaining to them about how the skeleton works when they move, how the heart beats before, during and after exercise etc...
So my idea is not to throw integration into the plate of the classroom teachers. To tell you the truth , there are now so many additional requirements being made with the new revised curriculum that they too are really pressed for time.
There are just so many health related fitness teaching concepts that we should hold on to as PE teachers - what perhaps we can do is elicit cooperation from classroom teachers (who by the way also might value the PE teacher more as an EDUCATOR in their very own right!!- far removed from the days of the "keep them busy, happy and good" type of PE teachers ).
I really think that we are teaching the best subject in the world ! Why ? Because PE can be such a creative subject to teach both PE content, motor skills etc, yet address also cognitive areas, and affective learning areas - we really need to teach in an integrated way - that is what would make what we are teaching relevant to the life of our pupils. I hold that that is far more important than improving fitness test scores alone.

By Marina Bonello (Marina) on Saturday, May 05, 2001 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Part 2

What I have failed to mention in the previous posting about the existing collaboration between subject teachers and class teachers in my school, was that the classroom teachers have now through the years, developed more confidence in wanting to integrated movement into their "academic" lesson content. I hold accountable for this less of confidence, the teacher preparation programs which in my own students days, comprised ONE single credit of elementary PE for those who wanted to take on the Elementary Classroom.
Field Day has for the past 6 years, been a way for me to both show case the PE program content, but it has also been an opportunity for the teachers to come down into my lesson and join me for the PE lessons for the 5 weeks leading up to the event. The teachers have now thus been able to join me to see what pedagogical skills are required for PE - skills do different from the classroom arrangement, been able to see me and join me to use PE equipment which was previously "alien" to them.
I feel really good when a class teacher comes to me to borrow some equipment - why ? because I know it they are integrating more movementinto their lessons too.
Thus I think the secret lies in one word - BALANCE.

By Maggie on Tuesday, May 08, 2001 - 05:58 pm: Edit

Steve I believe that many times I use strategies from the "regular" classroom to support my instruction in Physical Education. As Marina suggests, with an established collaboration between the classroom teacher and myself, we work hand in hand to support each other. I use writing a great deal to check the cognitive understanding of my students about certain areas in Physical Education. I use reading and writing to support my jump rope unit by incorporating rhymes into the unit. The students learn the importance of rhythm in movement and reading. Afterall, we are learning each day with brain-based learning, the importance of movement into the regular classroom. Physical Education can also provide some of the most "authentic" reasons for writing that can be found in the academic setting. To answer your question, as long as physical educators are establishing and reinforcing their importance in educating the "whole" child, other educators will respect and appreciate the importance of physical education in a child's development.

By Steve Jefferies (Admin) on Wednesday, May 09, 2001 - 09:58 am: Edit

Here's an example of how I think we may be fooling ourselves when we claim to be "integrating" in our physical education lessons:

Yesterday, I watched a lesson called "Bingo Basketball." The students had to take shots and if they scored they recorded letters on their bingo scoring sheets. Now, do we really think that because the students carried scoring sheets and had to write on them that we were integrating language arts into our lesson?! These were high school students. I find it hard to believe that it was of great benefit to them to learn the letters B-I-N-G-O! Even worse, while completing this activity the students were in groups of about 6 with one ball so that most of the time they were rather inactive.

Running laps and having the students count how many they do is NOT integrating. True integration surely requires that our activities complement what the students are at that time also learning in the classroom. I don't see much of that and don't know that we - as physical educators - have time to devote to it. The skill level of most students in physical education is so low that they need as much time practicing skills as possible. Trying to teach other things seems unlikely to be successful and likely result in us not teaching anything very well.

By Brian Barrett on Thursday, May 31, 2001 - 08:45 pm: Edit

I am concerned that when we have children writing in the gym, bringing paper and pencils into the gym, reading in the gym, measuring the circumference of the gym to integrate math, etc. we are losing what makes US unique. We are PHYSICAL educators. We are educators of the physical and through the physical (Jesse Feiring Williams). If I had wanted to use books, paper, and pencils, I would have become a classroom teacher (a name I don't really like since I have the largest classroom in the school - hmmm, I must be the most important). When I play a game that is movement based (lots of action, no elimination, each child enters at her/his own level, etc) that works on auditory firure/ground discrimination, auditory acuity, auditory directionality; OR a game that allows children to generate alternatives, plan a strategy, evaluate; OR well I could go on. The point is that I don't need to become familiar with the curriculum of every grade level in my building. If I can use games (movement) to enhance a child's ability to listen, to think, to get along with others (social), to be able to better concentrate, then I have contributed to their ability to learn and grow. And I have done so with the tool that makes my chosen profession different from the rest of the building - MOVEMENT.

Brian at http://hometown.aol.com/fitplay/index.html

By anna other on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Wow, this is so interesting. A really variety of opinions, all equally valied and positive. If only people knew how smart PE teachers are they wouldn't take us for granted quite so much.
I think that this issue is very deep and difficult to address in a few lines but for me, I am first and foremost an educator. I'm not a sports coach, or a language teacher. If you take the philosophy that people learn in different ways then surely we must consider that even in PE our students require a variety of methods. Some students will learn "facts" and "skills" through "doing" others through "words" some even through "rhythm" etc...
Your philosophy of integration will have to do with whether you believe that, at Elementary school level especially, we should be involved with educating the "whole child" or just "the subject content".
I too am somewhat concerned at the importance of stricking the best possible balance between the academic/cognitive and the physical. The amount of time you have assigned to PE, the philosophy, aims & objectives of your program and your situation with regards to working alongside "classroom" colleagues will probably vary enormously.
I hope that people will continue to add to this discussion as I find it very interesting.
Personally, though I call myself a Physical Education Teacher, I believe that I am a Teacher first and a Physical Educator second.

By Megan Spurling on Tuesday, March 19, 2002 - 07:55 am: Edit

As an undergraduate student in Physical Education at Kent State, I am learning that to be an effective teacher it is best to teach the whole student. It is imperative for students to learn the value of fitness from the psychomotor, affective and cognitive approaches. I may not have teaching experience thus far but I've certainly been exposed to the realms of possibilities for Physical Educators especially in regard to integrating technology.

As an elementary teacher I hope to incorporate other subjects content into my lesson plans by cooperating with other teachers at the school. I certainly agree that some students lose out during lessons where different subject content is integrated but I believe that is the fault of the educator, not the student. Like Marina stated in her posting, its all about balance. If you can balance your students physical activity time with outside content the two can compliment each other.

I believe that the physical education class provides an ideal environment for students to develop their motor skills AND their cognitive and affective skills. I feel that if we have the chance to encourage development in all three of these areas we should act on it.