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.