Althletics

With the onset of Athletics day looming, our syndicate goes out together so children get the opportunity to practice the track and field events every day. I like that the children have this opportunity to work on their skills, participate and have some friendly competition. Yet how it used to be taught in the past even bored me. Therefore if I’m bored surely the students are as well? Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti PE and do love being outside, but to me it just wasn’t working. We tended to move around in our classes and spend up to 30 minutes on one chosen item. Trying to engage a whole class, teach them skills and then let them work on this always felt rushed and disorganised. I never felt like I was making most of the opportunity or able to really teach them the proper techniques. I also had students who found certain track and field areas quite tough and a challenge. Each day they dreaded this hour with one actually avoiding school in order not to do it. Notes slowly would come in as well and athletics training felt more like a chore rather than a pleasure.

This year we decided to try and teach it in a way that was more like a MLE style that some of us have been trailing in the classrooms. We gave the students options! The first day we did this we allowed them the opportunity to visit any station they like. They had to spend at least 15 minutes there and had to do at least 3 stations. It worked ok but as teachers we still felt we didn’t really have the opportunity to teach the skills without new students coming over and some were still overcrowded.

Day two we decided to group the children into their age groups and designated two stations that were the MUST activities. Each day, two groups would go to the MUST activities and then carry on with their CAN choices. The rest of the groups had CAN activities but had to complete a certain amount in the allocated time. This worked so much better as groups were smaller and as a teacher, I felt that I had the time to teach new skills and techniques. It also meant that students had ample time to practise and work on their technique.

Feedback from my students showed that they enjoyed being given the opportunities’ to decide themselves what activities they wanted to do. My students who found athletics challenging also enjoyed it as well. Even my usual ‘absent’ one only missed one day out of the two weeks we did this! They also turned up to Athletics Day as they had realised that they had a pretty good throw on them!