Concept, Communication, Creation: Thinking Critically in Early Childhood PE
A lot of what we do in our K1 PE class here in Saudi Arabia is bodies-on. By that, I mean we spend a lot of time moving — jumping, rolling, bouncing, sliding, catching, kicking, running, bending, balancing, etc.
However, another component of our curriculum is brains-on — thinking about what we have done, why we’re doing it, and how to apply it in another context. In this way we achieve the sort of balance that doesn’t happen on the beam, exercising both our bodies and our brains.
This was the case in a recent unit we undertook. The main concept of the unit was process: things occur in a sequential order for a reason. We applied this concept to literature, as well as to the physical skills we endeavored to improve: jumping and landing, forward and backward rolling, and catching.
The conceptual base that the study of narrative structure afforded the students allowed them to more readily internalize the physical processes, while the visuals (the still images above were actually animated gifs inside a Google Slides presentation) provided them with a frame of reference when trying the skills out in the gym in authentic settings. Basically, the students were able to apply their prior and acquired knowledge of narrative, sequence, and process to a physical setting.
At this point in the unit, student interest in superheroes became readily apparent. Many of the children in our compound saw the movie Moana at the community movie theater and were profoundly excited about it. Instead of just thinking about jumping, rolling, and catching in isolation, we thought of ourselves as superheroes in training. We decided to call all the things we were working on “Superhero Skills,” talked about the different attributes of superheroes, and about how what we were doing in PE class applied to superheroes.
It was fun for the students to see their actions documented on our Inquiry Wall. This gave them a chance to reflect back on how much we have learned and what was our favorite part of the unit. The question I posed to the students and some of their answers are below:
However, the fun didn’t stop there. After Spring Break, the students came back and were asked to do some classifying of their reflections. Now the thought bubbles were labelled with the major themes of the unit and looked like this:
This gave the students the impetus to think about their unit reflection and decide into which major theme it fell, thus taking the reflection a step further. It allowed them to examine the themes of the unit that most interested them and prepared them for the unit’s summative performance.
In the summative performance, the students were asked to choose 1–3 Superhero Skills as attributes for a superhero they would portray during a time for role play. They noted their choices with superhero cards as markers.
The criteria for success was that the students would spend most of the time “in character,” which meant that the majority of their role playing time would be spent employing only the skills that they had chosen. A little wiggle room was allowed, which is wise for 3–4 year-olds. After using a GoPro to document the role play time, the teachers discussed and assessed the students’ understanding of the unit content and discussed options for further growth the next time around. The students were also shown an edited version of the superhero event, and a whole-class discussion ensued.
