CH 9: Developing the Content

Developing the content refers to the process of helping children learn the various motors skills that are typically taught in physical education.  As part of this process, teachers decide how long students should practice a given task, which cues are most appropriate for refining the task, and how to challenge the students to improve.  Imagine you are five minutes into a lesson on dribbling a basketball.  You have tasked the students to dribble in a clockwise path around the gym.  You already have to start making decisions about when and how to change the task, provide a cue or offer a challenge.  In a typical class some students would be performing below the expected standard of being able to dribble without losing control while others are speeding around the gym dribbling easily with either hand, in and out of traffic.  What goes into your decision to change the task, provide cues to refine performance, or offer challenges to those who need them before they get bored? 

The beginning teacher might arbitrarily assign a new task every five minutes under the assumption that five minutes is about the limit before boredom sets in.  The experienced teacher, on the other hand, considers the goals of the lesson and that there is always a progression between tasks in order to arrive at proficiency.  How to design this progression is the teacher’s key challenge.  Merely changing from one dribbling activity to a different one is not necessarily a progression.  Progression in lesson design can consist of making tasks easier or harder, of changing them from static to dynamic, altering the number of required movements, changing the number of children involved (size of the group), modifying the equipment, or using defenders. 

In addition to the progression of tasks, refining through the use of teaching cues is another important aspect of practice.  Cues are a lot like feedback.  It’s all about the quality.  Saying “Keep practicing – you’ve almost got it,” to a student who is trying to dribble without “spanking” the basketball is fairly useless from an instructional standpoint.  Whereas, “Touch the ball with your fingertips – it should feel springy,” is a cue that is more likely to help the student progress.  Some cues are used too often or too indiscriminately, like “Keep your eye on the ball.”  Graham makes an interesting point that a parent who has minimal background in physical education often uses this cue for many skills: batting, catching, kicking, punting, tennis, etc., and it is occasionally the right cue for the situation. “But the skillful physical educator, in contrast to the uninformed parent, is able to provide the child with an appropriate cue that enables the child to concentrate on an aspect of the movement that will lead to an efficient motor pattern for that skill.”  This is where the art of teaching is evident.  That ability to isolate a small piece of the skill that the student can give their complete focus to is the key to unlocking the larger skill.  What is the right cue for the child who does not step with the opposite leg when throwing but rather with the same side leg? “Step with the other leg,” “You’re a righty, so step with the left leg,” “Keep your right foot back and step and throw with your left leg.”  All are bound to be ineffective.  The key is for the child to get the feeling of shifting all his weight to the back (right) leg to the point where they are standing on one leg only.  That is the essential piece – the tipping point at which the correct motion becomes inevitable.

While two thirds of the class works on static or dynamic dribbling tasks, one third will need additional challenge to ingrain their skill and bring it to a new level.  Introducing defenders is one possibility.  But that might demand too much reorganization of the space.  A good alternative would be to introduce a piece of equipment that would increase the challenge.  You might offer the choice of tossing a scarf while dribbling, or a set of bean bags that have to be picked up and dropped in a bucket while maintaining the dribble.

How does the reflective teacher improve his or her teaching in this area?  One way is to have an observer record data about the type and frequency of teaching cues you give.  Graham provides examples of templates that allow the observer to capture information about statements that the teacher makes to the class about motor skills (not behavior).  The key is for the observer to capture the intent of the statement as being in one of the three categories:  extending/changing tasks, refining tasks, applying challenge.  The observer totals the frequency of statements in each category so that patterns become clear.  This is helpful information for a teacher, but it’s at least as important to assess the quality of the tasks, cues and challenges in terms of results in student performance.  Some key questions to ask are:  Did the students understand and use the cues being emphasized?  Was the cue appropriate – was it the right cue at the right time?  Was the progression of tasks to easy or too hard?  Were tasks changed unnecessarily or too quickly?  Did the challenges motivate students to practice longer?  Were the tasks appropriate for accomplishing your objectives for the lesson?

Chapter 7: Motivating Children to Practice

Teaching Children P.E. Ch. 7 Summary: “Motivating Children to Practice”

The word “motivating” is a key term in the title of this chapter.  While the chapter ostensibly describes a number of ways that successful PE teachers organize the lesson so that students can practice skills and tasks, really the focus is on designing practice with students’ motivation in mind.  How can I design this activity so that my students will maintain interest, not reach their frustration level right away, be challenged, feel successful?  These are the questions a teacher should be asking himself.  Graham describes a wide variety of approaches, and admits that they don’t work equally well in all classes and with all teachers.  It’s up to every teacher to determine which approaches work best with his students, but the starting point is to design activities for success. 

Self-adjusting activities are designed in such a way that they provided a challenge to students of different abilities, and therefore virtually guarantee success for all.  For example, the “slanty rope” provides a variable difficulty range by having one end high off the ground and the other low.  Jumpers can choose the spot they want to cross at.  Basketball nets set at different heights provides the same kind of choice.  While some teachers may be tempted to create one standard for all, it’s important to remember that lower skilled students who reach their frustration level very quickly, are not only unsuccessful, but also apt to become behavior problems and develop a negative attitude toward sports and fitness – which no one wants. 

Students are also likely to enjoy and persevere at tasks that provide intrinsic motivation.  An important way to do this is to avoid comparisons with other children, classes or norms.  Instead, teachers should guide students in the process of comparing their current and past performances to recognize how they are improving and to show them that practice eventually pays off.

For students to remain motivated, it is necessary to keep activities developmentally appropriate.  There is no one “right way” to do this. “Intratask Variation” is the slightly pretentious label that Graham uses for differentiating instruction.  The teacher plans activity options that will challenger different skill levels and decides which students should do them.  For example, in a volleyball unit most students may be able to strike a ball over the net.  Those who cannot, perhaps because of poor footwork or poor understanding of anticipation, can be sent to a wall station where they can set a ball off the wall to themselves.

For students that read, task sheets are an excellent way to allow for more independence so that the teacher can step back, observe and evaluate.  A task sheet might be a list of weight lifting or resistance tube stations.  It also might be a template for a jump rope routine where students make choices about the steps they will perform and record those choices.  Task sheets can provide students with higher success rates because they can proceed at their own pace.

Student-designed activities might seem risky to the teacher who has not tried them, but they can bring out enthusiasm, creativity and leadership in ways that other activities don’t.  Two such activities that I traditional do are hula-hoop castles and Invent-a-Game.  Hula hoop castles are structures designed and built by small groups.  Teachers may offer some design hints and should pre-teach methods of cooperating, but otherwise design and construction is left up to students.  For Invent-a-Game, set up several stations with different equipment stockpiles.  Small groups rotate through the stations with 8 to 10 minutes  to plan, set-up, and play a game using that equipment.  While student-designed activities are admittedly a challenge for more self-centered and immature students, the majority relish the opportunity to feel “in charge.”

Finally, making the home to school connection is a very important way to get parents to support their child’s interest in sports and fitness.  Fitness Calendars where each day describes a different activity or form of exercise that a student does at home are great ways to do this.  Parents initial each box that their child completes.  Design as many days as you want for tasks that the children share with a parent or sibling such as a game of catch, a hike or yardwork.  With parents participating in fitness with their children, motivation is almost guaranteed.