HEALTH
&
Physical Education
Te Whare Tapa Wha
Teaching experience so far...
What Health and PE programmes are relevant for the start of the year and why?
For our NZ season it is best to focus on swimming sports at the start of the year and developing P.E skills for summer sports being currently played. As for Health - at the start of the year it would help the new students and teacher to get to know each other by creating a pepeha or art work which can be put up in the classroom about 'who' you are and what makes you tick.
How do teachers go about creating an environment for learning?
Porritt Primary School has values - acronym PRIDE - positivity, respect, integrity, determination and excellence. For consistency the whole school focuses on one value at a time. They create activities where students are able to identify what those values 'look' like. One thing I admire is that some teachers play games with the students at lunch time everyday and before school every Tuesday and Thursday.
How does that link to the Health and PE curriculum? The NZC focuses on the importance of the students and teachers well-being. Hauora. By providing opportunities for students to develop these core values students will be able to cooperate with others and develop healthy relationships while being able to look after themselves (Student Agency)
Was there variation in teacher approaches and were they still effective? There are two teachers in the classroom. One male, one female. The female teacher creates lots of fun activities for the students. She is warm and friendly and does a great job reading to the class. The male teacher is more outcome focused. He enjoys using technology to create activities for the students and has a very calm and logical way of communicating to the students.
What is the place of Teaching as Inquiry in the school? As I am only on placement two days a week I have not had the opportunity to see this happening in the classroom in the yr5/6 class.
Taken from Gordon et al
For me a typical lesson would start with a warm-up, it would be looking at what skill we are going to look at today. I would be demonstrating and then going away in pairs to do some drills and take note of what skills you have and what ones students need to develop.
This approach has been described by Hoffman (1971) as the demonstration, explanation and practice method and more recently Metzler (2000) and Kirk (2010) as ‘‘the physical education method’’. They describe a teacher-centred approach to teaching physical education in which students have a limited role in how the class operates. This pedagogical approach owes much to physical education’s militaristic roots and offers comfort for teachers concerned with managing students outside the confines of the classroom. It is, however, philosophically at odds with the orientation of the New Zealand Curriculum, which places emphasis on creating a supportive learning environment, encouraging reflective thought and action, facilitating shared learning and teaching as inquiry.
Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and Cooperative Learning were specifically mentioned during the interviews
Education outside the classroom was also identified by 17 of the teachers interviewed as being an integral part of their programme: Every year level is involved in outdoor education every year. Like orienteering, water wise, beach and bush days (female teacher, early-career).
These comments show that teachers value planning, and see it as important in helping generate quality teaching and learning in high status subjects. Their decision to negate planning in physical education is a strong message that quality teaching and learning in this learning area is seen as less important. Assessment is another important element in quality teaching and learning ‘‘as both student and teacher respond to the information that it provides’’ (NZC; Ministry of Education 2007, p 39).
Reflection...
As a teacher I will focus on beginning the school year sharing a meal with the parents of the students in my class (on school grounds) and show them around the school and explain the layout and expectations of the school as well as my expectations. I'd also like to hear the parents expectations of me, the school and their children. Ask them to bring a photo of them with their child/ren - if they don't have one I will take a photo of them. I will ask them to share as a group what they enjoy doing as a family and I will take note of their interests as an area I can plan class inquiries around. A couple of times throughout the term I would like to invite parents back to the class to share photos, videos of students learning (kind of like a movie night) where their children are the stars. My goal is to create opportunities throughout the year for parents to discover their children on a deeper level - to see them as a gift full of potential and hopefully inspire them to support their learning from home beyond set tasks. At the end of the year I would like to be able to give each family a collection of photos, videos, artwork, etc as a box of memories based around everything the student has learnt throughout the year together with them.