Taking it Whole School
- Jan 15, 2019
- 12 min read
Updated: Jan 21, 2019
Hey there!
For this post I'd like to welcome my man Josh Simpson @HeadsUpHPE. Both Josh and I were looking forward to presenting a session at the ACHPER conference in Canberra this week, but due to unforeseen circumstances couldn't make it. However, we thought we'd share a bit of what our presentation was about. Josh has been teaching PE for 4 years at our school. I also taught PE for 4 years prior to my current Leading Teacher position. These tips come from both of our experiences as PE teachers and as Leaders in our school of approximately 850 students & 70 staff.
This was a small part of what would have been our presentation. We hope you can get something of it & please feel free to hit us up on Twitter!
1. What are your classroom teachers doing?
This year, our school's main AIP focus was Reading. During 2018, specialist teachers entered the classrooms they were due to take 10 minutes early. This 10 minute period provided a great time to touch base with students and their weekend highlights, but a time in which I (Josh) would support that particular classroom teacher by reading (with students within the class (mostly 1:1 with lower level readers) – or by providing extra support to the teacher. Supporting our whole school approach to reading, also assisted in building a whole school approach to PE. I felt like I wasn’t just seen by the kids (and the staff) as ‘ just the PE teacher.”, but someone invested in supporting classroom teachers and furthermore, the school.
This assisted in building a whole school approach because seeing first hand what teachers were doing in their classrooms can lead to us modifying minor games and lessons to further support literacy or maths within PE classes. This year, I (Steve) remember watching @HeadsUpHPE demonstrating to a Prep teacher a simple way to modify the minor game Cops & Robbers. To get out of gaol, students needed to speak a word from a flashcard used in the classroom.
So simple!
In my (Steve) opinion, classroom teachers are more likely to get on board with whole school sports days when they've seen you're invested in their classroom. "Hey, remember that time we played those games to help support your writing genre last term? Do you think you could come out a bit early with your kids and help us set up for Aths Day?"
2. Be a classroom teacher (Or some sort of "Real" teacher)
"Hey Mr.Crowe? When are you going to be a real teacher?"
It was a question I (Steve) lost count hearing from younger students. I'm sure you've had the same. Josh even gets it now. For some reason, always taking a quick stroll past the 7 Prep classes as they line up for class after recess. It’s like they mistake him for a rock star. “Hey Mr.Simpson!” Suddenly, the whole grade is calling out! But in all seriousness, this real teacher thing is something most specialist teachers hear. It's like kids don't place the same value on specialist teachers for some reason?
In 2014, I remember becoming increasingly frustrated by the feeling in the school in relation to people's frustrations about pressures from our leadership team. Wellbeing and staff morale wasn't particularly high from memory. I can remember one particular afternoon during an Aths day. Returning to my office, having fielded answers to similar questions, I closed the door and vented to our college Mrs.Peney.
"Seriously, why don't they just read the %^&$!#@ emails!"
In 2015, I was placed back into teaching Grade 5. (only 2 days a week) It didn't take long to figure out why teachers weren't reading emails about a Sports Day some distant date in the future. The amount of emails we're asked to sift through, communicating with parents, dealing with outside support services, parents, planning, organising things, etc. etc. The talk about teacher workload is a real issue for a lot of people. And I quickly recalled the different pressures classroom teachers had in comparison.
The idea of going back to classroom might not be realistic. But it’s more of a challenge to you than anything. I (Steve) can already imagine some PE teachers eye rolling or biting their nails at the thought of going back into the classroom. Not to take anything away from teaching PE, but the workload (in my experience) is a different sort of challenge. And whilst the organisation of notes, buses, district teams is time consuming, it's a different sort of stress. You don’t hear about many PE teachers complaining about working over the holidays, late hours, or suffering from burnout.
In 2015, we were concerned about the time teachers were devoting towards the health curriculum and how teachers seemed to only spend 30 minutes out of an allocated 50 for afternoon sport. These concerns were taken on board by our Leadership team, who proposed what I think is an ideal & effective way to get PE teachers back into the classroom. In 2016, Josh had a great opportunity to take a whole school approach to Health & PE into the classroom.
When I (Josh) first started my job, I was fortunate enough to teach Health as a Specialist subject to Grade 4. (Another part time teacher took the other Health classes). During these 50 minute sessions, I taught students the theory components of the HPE curriculum. We would discuss teamwork, bullying, our bodies, healthy diets, water safety, etc. etc. What made this even more enjoyable (and more respected) is that it wasn’t ‘release time’ for the classroom teachers. Instead, the classroom teachers sat in on the lessons, participated and offered insights into the discussion. Like earlier, when I was talking about the 10 minutes in the morning to help with Reading, this time ensured time to engage with classroom teachers and helped develop an understanding of why HPE was so important to the students.
3 years later, I'm back to taking PE full time with the classroom teachers taking charge of teaching the Health curriculum. A session of their timetables being a designated ‘Health’ lesson every week. They all have access to a program that has been developed over the three year period and will be able to confidently deliver the lessons in 2019.
3. PD Teachers about Health & PE
by going out of your way to help out in regards to building a classroom teachers ‘play book’.
This is crucial! This year, I (Steve) lost count how many times I would be waiting in my office to have a coaching meeting with a teacher, only to watch afternoon sport being organised and try not to die with shame I wasn't out there helping more!
I think this quote below brilliantly sums up what we’ve seen over the years.
Curry (2012) also states that generalist teachers have “very little specific training in HPE” (cited in Lynch, 2013, p.11). Furthermore, is Morgan and Hansen’s (2008) belief that although generalist teachers value PE and believe in its benefits, many do not feel confident, competent enough or physically fit enough to take PE classes.
(cited in McMaster, 2013, p.6)
Would I (Josh) want to step into a classroom teachers shoes and teach a maths lesson I’ve never done before on a topic I barely know about? Not likely. Is it any wonder classroom teachers might struggle with teaching FMS, minor or major games?
Let's give teachers the resources to run an effective PE lessons/activity using the best resource we have - us, the PE teachers! I (Josh) have invited classroom teachers into my lessons, created slide decks of games – with video footage explaining the rules, run PE games with the staff and taken time out during my time release to teach classroom teacher’s games. If classroom teachers can feel confident in running a game or activity, they’re more likely going to enjoy that time and be more inclined to actually run it. (Instead of reverting back to Dodgeball!)
4. Championing Health & PE
In 2015, I (Steve) attended a Primary ACHPER conference where one of the keynote speakers made it clear that PE teachers have a responsibility to champion Health & PE. The more she talked, the further I felt myself sink into my seat. I was like, "man, I hope no one comes and see what I've been doing." Because at that point in time, I had been in cruise mode, doing the bare minimum and being a champion of getting home early! But this talk had ignited my passion do more for the school, which really was a key moment in gaining the position I have today.
We've found a number of ways to champion H&PE from both a PE teacher and leadership perspective.
* It may sound petty, but bragging about your program, or even better, creating lessons students will brag about is one simple way.
* Create lessons that are themed, or have special teams and prizes for students that are participating within your program.
* Recruiting other teachers to help champion it through lunchtime, before/after school clubs/activities.
* Being seen at all Wellbeing/Sport activities or events and participating
This year, we (Josh) themed our Gymnastics unit around ‘Australian Ninja Warrior’, teaching students the importance of body movements and how to keep your body safe while participating in Physical Activities. Students walked into the gym with the ‘Australian Ninja Warrior’ logo frozen on the big screen (building excitement instantly). Students worked their way through weeks of ‘Ninja Warrior Training’ before taking on the ‘Ninja Warrior Course’. This was also a great opportunity to reach outside the classroom to someone that appeared on Australian Ninja Warrior (The Baninja). We managed to get a personalized video from a Ninja Warrior giving them tips on how to be the best they can be. Channel 9 even came to the party, sending us hats and water bottles! After the unit was finished, the Preps completed the Ninja Warrior Course and received a hat or a water bottle. Because the student's were talking about it, teachers started to ask questions, even wanting to have a go themselves.
5. Offer Lunchtime Activities for Teachers
After reading articles that spoke about the impact staff sport can have, I (Josh) decided to give it a go last year. Running staff sport can help colleagues on an individual level, as a collective, but it is also going to help your HPE program. I decided to run a 5 week staff-sport program, which would alternate days in order to allow for staff that had yard duty on particular days and alternated sports each week.
Eg. Week 1: Monday – Basketball Week 2: Tuesday – Cricket Week 3: Wednesday – Netball Week 4: Thursday – Tennis Week 5: Friday – Newcombe
These sessions would run for the first 25 minutes of our 50 minute lunch time. Instead of playing some competitive game, I would set up the gym (Or whatever area we were playing in) and play modified versions of the game as I would if I was teaching their classes. The idea being it not only caters for those not blessed with sporting ability, but it also gives teachers a reflection of what actually takes place within PE lessons. At first it felt strange, but the rewards were instant. Not only were teachers having a great time with each other, but it was offering them free PD on what games they could be playing with the students when they got the chance.
Without a word of a lie, after doing the Basketball session, the very next day I walked outside and found a class playing one of the games on the Basketball court with their teacher! This instantly offered a reward for giving up my own personal time. Not only were the students actively playing a game with their classroom teacher, but an inclusive game that provided students the opportunity to build on their skills, teamwork, cooperation, etc.
Without offering the staff sport this would not have happened. (And we'd have most likely seen Dodgeball)
If you're willing to try this, don't be disheartened when only a few people turn up, like anything, it takes time to build the momentum, but after running the sessions, the feedback was fantastic and something that I will look to continue going into 2019.
Further on from this, we often hold ‘Teacher V Student’ games that the whole school community enjoy. Previously we have mixed our Year 6 Hooptime All-Star Boys and Girls teams, and they have played a mixed staff team. Students come in to watch and it has actually bought together staff, not only in terms of playing, but spectators, DJs, Commentators, etc. This is another great way to use sport to create connections within your school.
I (Steve) had some other ideas worth trying (in a perfect world.)
Not really a novel idea, but P30 stands for Pearcedale & 30 minutes. A bodyweighted fitness circuit we're going to run at lunchtimes for kids and teachers.
CrxssCrxss is one of my favorite activities. Basically, it's like Crossfit, where you have a set workout you need to work through against the clock. For this, instead of different exercises we are doing Skipping tricks. Eg:
50 x singles
50 x doubles
25 x Crosses
25 x Backwards
20 x Hopper
20 x Bell
The tricks might have different names in different schools. But there are some awesome videos on youtube of kids demonstrating how to perform different tricks.
The key with any lunchtime club is that they need to have a set start and finish date. We’ve found that having things go for the whole term, or year, like a running club, there can often be a drop off of motivation. Kids are more likely to show up if it’s on regularly, within a short time frame.
The other benefit with activities or clubs like this is it can lead to giving our student's a voice!
6. Empowering student Leaders
At our school, we have 3 ‘Sports Leaders’ for each of our Houses that consists of extra responsibilities throughout the year. They could be as simple as marking/inflating equipment, packing up the sports shed, but also extends to more time consuming things like running Athletics or Cross Country day.
Something else that you can do to empower students is give them a choice over their learning. Through the use of a custom-made Google Form designed for students to give me feedback on my lessons, I asked the students what they wanted to learn about moving forward. While you certainly cannot cater for all their responses, you can use the responses to assist with your planning moving forward.
Student Voice is being pushed by the department with the release of Amplify. We'd love to see students responsible and empowered enough to take the sports equipment out and run minor games or activities with younger students. We have so much equipment! It seems a shame to just let it sit inside the Sports shed on a good day.
7. Changing House Names
As a growing school, we found 4 sports houses was simply not enough. The houses were becoming overcrowded, it was tough to give all students a turn on House Carnival days, and some teams often were weighted with stronger/weaker students as they got into the senior school.
Based upon this we decided to expand the houses from 4 to 6. During this process, we decided to name the houses after modern-day Australian Sporting heroes. We short listed a number of athletes from various sports we thought could be appropriate and created a ‘Google Form’. The entire school community, parents, teachers and students could vote on the Athletes they wanted. Over 50% of the school community registered their votes for the Athletes and winning names were revealed at our last school assembly.
Essentially, our whole community had input into the sporting program. A relatively simple task that built enormous excitement for the school!
In the end, we ended up with houses named after Patty Mills, Kurt Fearnley, Billy Slater, Steph Gilmore, Torah Bright and Sally Pearson.
8. Skipping Sports
Big shout out to Mr.Mark O’Sullivan who showed me the brilliant Skipping program he was running at his school. Implementing this at our school was a huge success. Basically, we taught students skipping for the first half of a term. Students learnt different tricks each week, which culminated in a House Sports competition.
Basically, students are split into houses. They get 20 seconds each to skip a particular trick. For example, SINGLES. After that 20 seconds, the teacher blows the whistle. The first team sits down, and then the next team stands up. Students earn points for effort judged by teachers rather than counting how many skips are completed.
I (Steve) know that’s a poor explanation. But it’s easy to chat or show. However, the best thing about this was that you can run it across a week during afternoon sport time & often didn’t even require the teachers to stay around. No impact on the timetable, no interruptions and was super fun and engaging.
I (Steve) have a video I can show you that demonstrates how simple it is to set up. It shows a lot of the kids faces however that I don’t have permission for so am reluctant to post!
9. Sporting Leagues
This is something really exciting that was brought to our attention by Paddy Swayne from Moorooduc Primary School. (Not far from us) Reading the article gives a good idea of what it's about, but in short, Paddy created a football competition at his school called the MFL.
As soon as we heard about it, we thought how great it would be to create a sporting association where students were members of a team for their life at primary school, not just for Footy, but potentially any sport.
So far, we’ve gotten as far as having the Grade 6 students decide the 10 different Clubs, which are named after streets in Pearcedale. Ideally, we’d like to get this up and running by the end of the year with one or maybe two sports.
The Rainbow Raptors
The Cherry Chickens
The Rainbow Rebels
The Victoria Stars
The North Nights
The Pearcedale Pelicans
The Feltham Flamingos
The Westernport Whales
The Oakden Raiders
The Perryman Pirahnas
A sporting league can then go as far as you’d like. Paddy told us about having an MVP for the league, a draft camp, commentators, a ‘weekly bulletin’ that talks about the games. Create Logo’s and Player profiles for each team. These extra things not only help build a whole school approach to PE, but support learning in other subject areas. Eg. Writing a bulletin. Using maths to update a ladder.
10. Your Turn
We are sure you guys have some great ideas as well! Please feel free to share as we'd love to hear about it!
Thanks for reading!
Steve & Josh
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