Scooter Skills and add a little FUN!

Scooter fun provides children with opportunities to explore various locomotion strategies while on a scooter. If you notice in the video many children use various methods of moving on the scooter. Some strategies are not as efficient as others but all of the children have an opportunity to see what best works for them. While learning it is obvious just how much fun scooter exploration can be for all of the kids.!

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Physical Education for children that learn at a different pace!

The concept of Open Gym was developed by the P.E. Dept. at the Ezra Baker Elementary school in collaboration with our principal Mr. Depin.  The Baker School’s change to become an Innovation school created new offerings such as Spanish, Enrichment class, Calmer Choice, Improved fresh farm food choices,  and an increase in the related arts: Music, Art and Physical Education.

Within the P.E. Dept. the development of base line skills and conditioning were identified as a way to track children over the course of a school year.  We have established a base line of specific abilities and are able to track improvement percentages yearly.  Our goal this year was to set a goal for each child to improve 25% over the course of the year, which we accomplished.

We also, attempted to make a significant change in the way we attempted to deliver P.E classes to reach children with special needs to maximize their opportunities to learn skills, benefit from social opportunities and as a way to integrate all children as a healthy life style was our focus.

Traditionally, children with special needs had their own block of P.E. time at a certain time of day  and special attention was given to the children.  But, the children who participated all had unique needs and the activities presented were diverse and skill focused, which was of questionable value now looking back at those classes.

So, in looking at the  those children who all had different learning styles, our thinking went to “what if” we allowed them to come at a time that was good for each child and not have a set time.  Then, we considered the benefits of learning a skill and their need for social integration among all students and the concept started to take shape.  Why not have these children with different learning styles learn what every other child was learning and become part of the social interaction  and fun of  being part of a class?  It was our opinion that any skill or game could be modified for any child and so we tried out our concept.

After this trial year, we now believe it is the right approach.  Children attended various P.E. classes when they felt the opportunity was right for them during the day.  Even though they attended a class that was different than their regular class, we found the children still enjoyed playing with other children.  Games could be adapted and with the help of their assistants, games became fun, while also providing the acquisition of a skill and the social contact for all students.  Students learned that adapting game rules to include all was a fair and caring strategy for inclusion.  Children never complained about the adaptations and in fact allowed themselves to get tagged by slower children who were using adaptive strategies.  We observed children who had difficulty with social interactions approach other children with a smile, a huge gain!!!!  Children learned concepts like tagging children, throwing balls,  hitting, kicking, using hula hoops etc., things that had they tried to use them in their own P.E. class might not have meant as much.  We had many children who wanted to accompany children with special needs to help them move from class to class, so this integration had a wonderful caring effect on all children, who were more than happy to find ways to included different children!

The difficulties we experienced as teachers were:  children showing up at any time so we had to be prepared to teach to any child and be ready to adapt games; Children who had shouting behaviors were the most difficult because of the distraction to the class when we gave directions.  We solved that by having the shouting students practice their listening skills for a duration that fit within their capabilities and or we asked the assistant to take them for a walk until we could finish our directions and then have the student join us to participate in the skill and to have fun.  At times, we had students come into the gym to do something different than what the class was doing and we stopped that as it was to distracting.  So, we decided that anyone could attend but that they had to do whatever the class was doing and we soon found that to not be a problem.

In conclusion, its more of a challenge for the teacher to deal with children dropping into a class but it’s the benefits to the children that make this challenge well worth the time.  The concept of children learning at their best time during the day just makes sense in the P.E setting.

Baseball Hitting!

In this unit, we are hitting off of a cone and playing "Homerun Derby" as a way to keep kids excited, practice their hitting and learn a fun game that they can play at home. Children at all ability levels can have fun!

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BMI findings for 2012 -2013


I checked the BMI scores and found the amount of children in the BMI range in the catagory of overweight and obese to be 35% for First graders.
I compared the first grade children who are on the BMI list for overweight of which there are 20 children comprising 24%;
and children classified in the Obese range of which there are 9 children or 11%, which when combined the rate is thus 35% population.

I checked the children who did the Pacer cardio test and I found that 14 of the 20 children classified as overweight performed at their class average or better and showed improvement on the cardio test over the 3 testing periods of the school year.

Also, of the Obese classified children 4 out of  the 9 total in this catagory, twere able to  perform the pace test at the class average or better and also improved on the cardio test over the year..

So, out of the 35% of children in this category, thru their work efforts during our P.E. classes over the year, we were able to help them to improve their pacer score, their cardio health over the course of the year.to an average score or better for 62% of the children who scored high in the BMI assessnment.
Only 11 children or 13% of the children did not improve their health or show improvement in their ability to improve physically.

Overall, I think this is good news because I think it demonstrates that with help that children can improve their cardio health from the time they come into the school in the Fall to the end of school.

Completed May 10, 2013

Throwing and catching skills require correct throwing  mechanics, accuracy of the throw and how to catch a ball by tracking the ball into your hands which need to be in the right position!  all grades need practice!