Planning for a Physical Education Program
Basketball, baseball, tennis, dance, gymnastic and healthy active living skills! Where do we begin? In looking through the Ontario Curriculum, there are so many expectations set out for each grade that it can be very difficult to determine where to begin in your planning. Don't panic! While planning for a health and physical education curriculum may seem like a daunting task, there are many resources and supports in place to ensure that you will be successful. Take your time and explore this section and learn the key components required for planning physical education units and lessons, health units and lessons and Daily Physical Activities in the classroom.
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Steps in Planning a Physical Education Unit
1) Choose a strand of physical education
2) Reference the Ontario Curriculum document and choose the specific movement skill/ strategy that you will be working on and assessing throughout the unit
3) Create a mind map, brainstorming ideas of physical and active activities to run which correlate to the unit strand and meet the specific expectations of the curriculum
4) Reference OPHEA lesson plans for suitable ideas for activity ideas
5) Reference OPHEA safety check generator to ensure that you are aware of all rules, procedures and safety concerns regarding the specific strand of physical eduction and the activities you are completing.
6) Consider the needs of all students and ensure you make appropriate alterations to successfully include every child
7) Consider the skills that you will be assessing throughout the unit and during each lesson. Begin to plan and create your assessment tools.
2) Reference the Ontario Curriculum document and choose the specific movement skill/ strategy that you will be working on and assessing throughout the unit
3) Create a mind map, brainstorming ideas of physical and active activities to run which correlate to the unit strand and meet the specific expectations of the curriculum
4) Reference OPHEA lesson plans for suitable ideas for activity ideas
5) Reference OPHEA safety check generator to ensure that you are aware of all rules, procedures and safety concerns regarding the specific strand of physical eduction and the activities you are completing.
6) Consider the needs of all students and ensure you make appropriate alterations to successfully include every child
7) Consider the skills that you will be assessing throughout the unit and during each lesson. Begin to plan and create your assessment tools.
Fundamental Movement Skills
When planning any physical education unit and/or lesson, the main focus should be to foster physical literacy by breaking apart and teaching the fundamental movement skills in different ways. Addressing the fundamental movement skills is a key component of any physical education unit, but not everyone may know what these skills are, and how to teach them successfully. Again, this is where OPHEA documents become so valuable. The following OPHEA document outlines the fundamental movement skills that are critical to the successful development of physical literacy.
learn_to_move_movement_skills.zip | |
File Size: | 5000 kb |
File Type: | zip |
Physical Education Plan: Year at a Glance
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Sample Plan for a Grade 4 Gymnastics Unit
In planning for a gymnastics unit, the first step I took was identifying which curriculum expectations I wanted to focus on. I added those to my mindmap first. I then brainstormed multiple activities that I could run to help students successfully achieve each expectation. From there, I combined these activity ideas into daily lesson plans which included a warm up and cool down.
For ideas and sample unit plans, you can access the OPHEA document for the corresponding grade.
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Sample Grade 4 Gymnastics Lesson Plan
The following is a sample lesson plan of how to run gymnastics centres.
gym_gymnastics_cenrtes.doc | |
File Size: | 39 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Safety Check
While planning the activities for your units and lesson plans, it is extremely important to be planning for safety. This includes ensuring that you have all equipment and that the equipment is in appropriate working condition, that the activities you are planning meet the safety criteria of the OPHEA guidelines and that you have planned appropriate supervision methods for all lessons.
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Planning for Health Unit
Healthy Active Living
According to the Ontario HPE Curriculum, "The Healthy Living strand of the curriculum should make up 30% of instructional time in the HPE Program. Expectations may be explicitly taught or integrated into the Physical Education program and/or other curriculum areas," (Julie Mueller, 2013). Many teachers are intimidated or worried to teach the subject of health, but there are many great resources available to support your teaching. Check out the wonderful resources below, and learn about some fun and interactive ways to integrate health topics into physical education lessons!
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Health Class
How many times have you heard a student say, "I love phys.ed, but health is so boring!" Often healthy living components are taught in the classroom using textbooks, pencils and paper. Often these lessons are not as engaging as the normal phys. ed. classes, meaning that students are not as engaged and motivated about healthy living skills. How can we change this?
CiRA has put together a document of 50 indoor interactive games and activities that combine physical movement with the content of healthy eating choices. |
Take Health Outside!
Health class is not limited to the classroom or the gymnasium. Why not encourage and teach healthy, active living though outdoor activities?
CiRA has composed a series of interactive games and activities regarding healthy lifestyles and healthy eating that can be conducted outdoors. Get your class involved in healthy living while teaching fundamental components! |
Outdoor Education
While healthy eating is a huge component of healthy living skills, active living plays a huge role as well. What better way to teach a health unit, then to create a cross-curricular unit combining outdoor education and active living. If we want to plant the seed for students to want to be physically active outside of school, we need to teach them ways that they can use the environment around them that are fun, engaging and require physical activity! CiRA put out a document called "Ten things to do before you're 10" and describes fantastic outdoor activities that would foster a healthy, active lifestyle.
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Resources for Teachers
While creating cross-curricular lessons between health content and phys.ed is a fantastic way to engage students in healthy education content, it is not the only way to engage students. Health is a fantastic course as it allows many opportunities for inquiry based learning within the classroom. The many strands of health units create many opportunities for student driven questions.
The following link was found on the CiRA website and is a compilation of useful websites related to varying strands of the health curriculum (nutrition, eating disorders, the human body, safety, senses, sexuality, drugs and alcohol, etc.) |
Daily Physical Activity
What is DPA and why is it important?
On October 6, 2005, Education Minister Gerard Kennedy announced that every elementary student will participate in a minimum of 20 minutes of daily physical activity as part of the government's Healthy Schools Program (Ministry of Education, 2013). The purpose of implementing DPA is based on information discovered from multiple research activities which conclude that regular physical activity has a positive impact on student's physical, mental and social well-being (Ministry of Education, 2005). The Ministry of Education released a document called "Daily Physical Activity in Schools" in 2005 as a resource to support teachers in successfully implementing DPA in the classroom. Within this document, the Ministry has described three key reasons why DPA is a successful means in motivating students to be active. These key reasons are enjoyment, development of physical competence and social acceptance. Throughout the rest of the document, the ministry clearly outlines how to plan for DPA, how to instruct DPA and a variety of activities that successfully meet the criteria of 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
On October 6, 2005, Education Minister Gerard Kennedy announced that every elementary student will participate in a minimum of 20 minutes of daily physical activity as part of the government's Healthy Schools Program (Ministry of Education, 2013). The purpose of implementing DPA is based on information discovered from multiple research activities which conclude that regular physical activity has a positive impact on student's physical, mental and social well-being (Ministry of Education, 2005). The Ministry of Education released a document called "Daily Physical Activity in Schools" in 2005 as a resource to support teachers in successfully implementing DPA in the classroom. Within this document, the Ministry has described three key reasons why DPA is a successful means in motivating students to be active. These key reasons are enjoyment, development of physical competence and social acceptance. Throughout the rest of the document, the ministry clearly outlines how to plan for DPA, how to instruct DPA and a variety of activities that successfully meet the criteria of 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
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Ideas for Daily Physical Activities in the Classroom
OPHEA has created wonderful appendices which provide great DPA activities for primary grades, as well as junior grades.
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