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.