Listen to a slow and fast beat on a drum, piano, etc. Ask the children to move to the beat in a variety of ways. Some ideas could be…
Before students can express themselves at a satisfactory level throuh movement, they need to build up their vocabulary. Students can’t be expected to find out all about movement for themselves!
Click on the below links for lessons and games :
Every child has their own rhythm and children enjoy developin their own rhythm and also keepin in time to those set by others. Try this fun lesson!
I believe that health education is very important in primary school as it sets up habits for children into adulthood. If a child belonged to a lower class family that weren’t aware of a certain health issue, then it is the child who can teach their family and get everyone involved. The socio-ecological perspective shows that health education is not based on the individual.
Tasker states that a socio-ecological perspective “requires balance and integration between individual and societal considerations. It encourages self reflection, critical thinking, and critical action.” I believe that health education is for health, not just about health. Health education must promote and facilitate voluntary application of health knowledge to health-enhancing actions in daily life. This is based on the premise that if present health knowledge were applied in daily living, then many more individuals within our society, and our society as a whole, would enjoy the benefits of better health.
Health promotion has links with the socio-ecological perspective because it needs involvement and action of people from the wider school community. These people include the children themselves, parents or caregivers and other community members such as business owners (for example, the local fruit barn donating apples for “The Big Crunch”). Health promotion is about encouraging children to be empowered and to take action in their own environment as well as improving their own well-being. Many factors impact on the overall health of groups or individuals. These "determinants of health" interact with each other and with others to influence health. For example, the social and physical environments in which we live influence the way we behave. In turn, the way we feel and behave affects our biology and our overall health. Key determinants of children’s health, or factors that affect children’s health could be categorised as: social, physical, mental, spiritual (hauora), economic environment; individual capacity, coping skills and personal health practices and so on.
All these issues are important in education because I believe it is what makes New Zealand health education unique. Other countries don’t have the Maori philosophy of hauora and it is this which adds to New Zealand diverse culture. Health education is important because it is more than an educational goal. A healthy living environment is essential
throughout school, not just health lessons. The school, as a living environment, provides many opportunities for the student to apply health knowledge and skills at home and in the community. Health in general is important in children’s health issues in New Zealand because it promotes a healthy lifestyle. Students come from many different backgrounds and some parents or caregivers are more ignorant about health issues than others. I remember at primary school, after learning how important it is to brush your teeth, I would remind mum and dad to brush their teeth 3 times a day constantly. Health isn’t just about knowing about it, it is applying it too.
A classroom needs physical, emotional and social aspects of a classroom climate so it can positively support a comprehensive health program. It is good to begin thinking about our classroom experiences so we can reflect how these spaces made us feel and the effect they had on our thinking and behaviour. From Year 4 all my classrooms had couches with cushions. This made me feel comfortable especially when we had silent reading time or when the teacher was reading a book. The couches were also used as a reward system and we felt privileged and good sitting on them. There were no negative feelings towards the couches at everyone had a go sitting on them. We live in a society that values levels of high stimulation. Teachers need to think how to best facilitate these skills by the environments they offer. In an attempt to be stimulating, some classrooms can go overboard on displays and materials that can be over stimulating and confusing to the child.
Physically children need space to move. The use of space is vital in flexibility and ease of movement. It is very important that children don’t feel squashed and uncomfortable. We need to think how we feel if we’re squashed in an elevator or how it feels when someone invades your space when sitting next to someone in an aeroplane. Good air ventilation and lighting can make a difference in a classroom. It is harder for a student or teacher to work in when it is ‘stuffy’ or when it is too light or dark. Uncluttered space and well placed furniture will assist in keeping the classroom physically healthy too. When the teacher/school provides a caring and supportive environment, students feel mentally and socially healthy so they can contribute to the classroom, the school and community life. The teacher should respond to the student’s needs in a sensitive manner. Members of the school community need to ensure that practices, policies, and structures of the school agree with the aims and achievements of the health curriculum. The teacher should use a style that reinforce the development of a sense of personal and social responsibility. Mutual respect, trust and positive attitudes need to be developed and the teachers need to provide experiences for this. As schools in New Zealand are becoming more multi-cultural teachers need to be aware of other culture’s customs and beliefs. If a teacher doesn’t meet the individual needs of a foreign student, they could feel embarrassed, alienation, excluded and even upset the parents.
The school, in assuming its unique responsibilities for providing health education, must consider the age, maturity and needs of individual children from a wide variety of home backgrounds. It is crucial that parents, caregivers and the community are informed. For example, parents from a strong religious background might not want their daughter learning about sexuality education. Failure of informing the parents could cause of trouble for the teacher and the school. South Korean, Japanese and Chinese educators say, “In our culture it is impolite to say one can do well, even if one thinks so” Beane(1991). This means for some Asian children, it is extremely hard to them to say what the think they do well at. It is important that teacher and the school has positive relationships with the parents and caregivers. If consultation is made with the school, parents, and staff it will assist in the development of related school policies and can obtain feedback from the parents. It will also provide opportunities for students, teachers, parents and caregivers to enhance student’s learning. Such consultation could be in the form of meetings with the parents and caregivers, updates in newsletters or permission slips being sent home. When I was in Form 1 the school sent permission slips home to get the parents and caregivers approval to teach puberty lessons. One girl’s parents didn’t allow her to learn it because the parents wanted to teach her themselves. She was of New Zealand European decent which proves a point that just because a family is kiwi, it doesn’t mean that they agree on certain health issues as other people of the same decent.
Food and nutrition has particular important in school primary education because it is related closely to other aspects of health such as exercise and home economics (cooking). Food, nutrition and exercise are three terms that are commonly used together. I remember in cooking (at ‘manual’) we learnt lots about nutrition and theory as well as learning how to cook snacks and meals. I remember we learned about how important eating breakfast is and later on in the year the whole senior school ate breakfast together in the hall. It is important in school health education because good eating habits are formed in childhood and maintained in adult life. If a child is home alone after school, it is the child’s responsibility to decide what he/she will eat. I remember many activities we did as part of food and nutrition at primary school. We made a food triangle out of pictures from magazine, the ‘Big Crunch’ and shared lunches. Food and nutrition relates very closely to a couple of major health issues in New Zealand society such as obesity and diabetes.
The number of overweight and obese children is rising more every year and reaching epidemic numbers, following other western countries’ trends. It is mainly because of poor diets due to large fat intakes and not enough exercise to burn it off. Type 2 diabetes is also at epidemic proportions, driven mainly by demographic trends and the increasing prevalence of overweight obesity, accounting for about a third of the overall increase in diabetes (Ministry of Health, 2002). The only way to slow the epidemic down is to improve nutrition and increase physical activity which is why food and nutrition is so important in the health curriculum.
Beane, J.A. (1991). Sorting out the Self-Esteem Controversy. Educational Leadership, 49 (1)
Tasker, G. (1998). Total Well being: Health education for the new millennium. Set: Research Information for Teachers
http://www.nal.usda.gov (June 2000). Food and Nutrition Centre
http://www.moh.govt.nz (March 2002). Diabetes in New Zealand. Ministry of Health
The purposes of this game are to explore movement/space and passing skills, and to work and communicate as a team. This game is intended for middle school children upwards and there are many variations of the game.
Attackers |
Defenders |
| How can you co-operative with your team to tag a player? | Where on the court is the best place to be to avoid being tagged? |
| Which types of passes are best to help you tag someone? | What can you do to avoid being tagged? E.g. dodge the opponent |
Instead of teams trying to reach the score line, change the aim of the game to trying to tag the opponents as many times as possible to score points. Encourage the teams to intercept the ball.
This variation could be the first team to 10 tags or as many tags as possible within a time limit. Allow a ‘half time’ so teams can discuss strategies.
There are also small variations that can be used within the two versions of the game.
These include:
Here are just a few questions I got asked that I had to think about when designing a classroom fitness programme.
I needed to make sure I had a variety of activities and that they weren’t all too similar. I needed to make sure they they were activities that had high participation of all the class and it fitted in with their physical ability of their development stage. I had to make sure they didn’t require much prior knowledge to perform the activity. Since the actual activities were only ten minutes, I had to ensure that the activities did not involve too much equipment because that takes time.
I would probably teacher daily exercise around 9.30 am because it allows for all the late comers to get to school. By the time it is ready to do fitness, all the roll, notices and other business that is part of the ‘morning agenda’ is finished. At that time children are relatively alert and they have plenty of time to do work afterwards, for example, writing before morning tea and their brains will be even more alert after physical activity. After lunch they would of already been moving around enough and might put as much input as earlier in the day.
To make physical activity available to all children and encouragement a commitment to an more active lifestyle, in a positive way. Frequent and regular physical activity is essential for children’s’ optimum growth. Regular fitness has an impact on a child’s personal and social development. A daily exercise program improves cardiovascular efficiency. It can also have a positive influence on health problems such as diabetes, back problems, obesity and heart disease. It can have a positive influence on sleep and poor posture, self esteem, confidence and concentration during classroom activities.
Here are a range of fun classrooms games and great if your relieving in a classroom! Games include: Run Around, Make a Face, People Patterns, Crocodiles, Knots and the Cardboard Boat Games. To see more games, see Drama Games .
Organise the children to sit in a large circle (this game is best played outdoors. The teacher makes a statement such "someone who has blue eyes". Everyone who has blue eyes then gets up and runs around the circle and back to theirr place. The game then continues with other categories such as itmes of clothing, likes/dislikes or preferences at home.
The teacher uses pictures of faces with expressions. A child from a group or class take turns to take a card and without showing it to the other children, demonstrate the expression. The other children in the group or class have to try name the expression. Expressions could be sad, happy, angry, excited, nervous etc
Organise the children into groups of about 6. Discuss different types of patterns (this could be linked to algebra) for example A B B A, A C B A B, A A B B A. Have the members of the group organise themselves in patterns. Once they have made a pattern the group stands infront in the class in that order. An example of a pattern could be "white shoes, black shoes" or "jerseys on, jerseys off". The people pattern should tell the class what type of pattern they are demonstrating (A B A B, etc). The class then has to guess who can go next in the pattern. They may not guess the pattern until have named a person to stand next in the people pattern. The child to correctly identify the pattern will join his/her group to establish the next pattern.
Organise the class into four large groups and ask them to stand on a bench or marked area. Tell the children they have to pretend they are in a lifeboat and there are crocodiles in the water. If any of them fall in, the crocodiles will know they are there and they will get eaten. Their task is to organise themselves in order according to what the teacher calls out. Examples could be height, birthdays, age etc.
The whole class stands in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. Each child has to reach out and grab two different hand, not including people next to them. Encourage the children not to criss-cross their hands. The children must untangle themselves so that everyone is standing in a round circle again. After the children have done this, try organising the children into two groups and make it a competition.
This game is best played in a gym or field. Each team (4-6 children) are given a piece of cardboard, just big enough for them all to stand on. The game starts off with all members of the group’s hand carrying the piece of cardboard (the boat). The teacher has a choice of two commands: ‘Go’ means teams can move forward holding their piece of cardboard at any speed, and ‘attack’ means the team must put their piece of cardboard on the ground and all team members must stand on it. If one child falls off the boat, the whole team goes down. The last team to get on their boat is ‘out’ and they must rip of piece of coardboard off from their boat before the teacher calls out ‘go’ again. The object of the game is to get to the other end of the gym or field.
As with any curriculum area, every individual needs to be accounted for in sports education. Through Murdoch’s ‘Integration Model", each child and their ability is the starting place. I would use Murdoch’s reading as a tool when teaching sports education as it is important to know the different models and what discourses other teachers may have and to examine my own beliefs of how physical education and sport education can work together. The curriculum key area of learning in the curriculum document states the importance of hauora rather than basing sports on just motor skills. In addition to this, the Moving Through Sport documents states how paramount that the well being and health promotion must be accounted for. I need to modify games according to the children’s needs as children are not physically or psychologically mature as adults.
At present this level of achievement is not recognised in all primary schools (Murdoch). Appropriate experience for children is not being provided, which results in children reaching their later primary years, lacking the mastery of their own bodies in movement. I believe children have the right to reach ‘mastery’ and it is the teacher’s role to acknowledge that it is happening and convince those concerned that a real change must take change in this area. One of the aims of sport and physical education is to provide physical activity in a way that promotes long-term benefits. In saying this I believe that children should have the opportunity to take part in co-curricular programmes as children ‘build on and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes’ they learn in the physical education curriculum.
The child’s sense o achievement is vital for their future participation. Through this achievement comes satisfaction which is the deep and lasting basis for enjoyment. It is my role to make sure that achievement isn’t only felt after winning a game, but other factors such as achieving personal goals and recognising their own improvement (Farquhar, Gerrard). By modifying/restructuring games and restricting the challenge, it ensures that the fun element is preserved and children soon accept modifications as the norm.
Excellent key documents I would use to play modified sport are the Kiwi Sports resources, which are developmentally appropriate for the developmental stages of primary school children. With the Kiwi Sports documents, there are no excuses for a teacher not to teacher sport to junior children. A Reminder that sport education is different to fitness. Junior sports are more individual, fundamental and skills based. Junior children benefit from games and simple challenges which progress from individual play to small group activities either with or without equipment. Games need to be kept short and simple with all children taking part.
Participation is hugely important in the sports education model. There should not be ‘elimination rounds’ followed with children simply sitting on the sideline when their team loses (Siedentop, 1998). At every step of the process the children are involved. and have roles, for example, they are involved in co-operative planning, coaching, and scoring. Through these different roles that are taking responsibility for themselves and others. I believe the Game Sense approach is an excellent way to achieve participation as games are played in small groups. As well as being challenging and fun, it is very much tailored to the needs of the children. If certain aspects of a games are too easy the children brainstorm ways to add an extra way to make it more challenging, especially with the ‘dominant’ children in the class. I favour game sense because of the ability grouping, as those dominant children can always be extended and challenged further.
Feedback should be an ongoing process through the sports education model. It is a two-way process useful for assessing both the coach/teacher’s methods and the understanding of the children. After a game, children should always be allowed time to discuss their strategies. It it the perfect opportunity for a time for children to self-asses. I believe the community should be in volved in sport/physical education. Teachers and coaches can and should work together to provide a rich a and varied programme. The Physical Education Curriculum emphasises that sports programmes can be developed in partnership with clubs and other community groups.
As issue of sports education is the coverage of different sports. In consultation within the syndicate/school, children can be exposed to a variety of sports, rather than every year playing for example netball/soccer. For some children, schools are the only places that they experience sport. It is therefore crucial that teachers at least provide one opportunity to learn a sport through the sports education model. An implication of the sports model is that it cannot be fitted easily into a short unit. However because the actual tournament is a lengthy process, there are so many opportunities to integrate into other curriculum areas.
It is important for children to recognise that sport is part of the New Zealand culture. I will move away from the traditional way of learning, which is teaching ‘techniques’ in an isolated way that becomes useless if not used again or even applied in the sport being learnt. When children learn game-related skills and understanding they are able to transfer these skills to other sports, for example, spatial awareness in netball and soccer. It is important to emphasise other skills that can be transferred other than movement skills that are learnt through a sport, such as including others and developing tolerance towards personal difference. All these qualities that are learnt through sport add to a more positive classroom climate.
One of the most positive experiences of the sport model is the affiliation – children maintain their team throughout the whole season. Evidence suggests that much of the social meaning derives from sport experiences, as well a a large part of the personal growth often attributed to positive sporting experiences, is intimately related to affiliation with a persisting group .These values are strongly linked to the social well-being part of hauora. Another part of social well-being is that within a team, and other classroom members, students will support each other. As well as being part of hauora, supporting and encouraging each other is part of fair play. The Physical Education Curriculum emphasises that fair play should be practiced at all situations. It is my role to ensure that this i made explicit from the very start of the unit. It is not sufficient to simply tell what fair play is. It is a lot more meaningful if they can link prior experiences of times that they saw fair play, and build upon that knowledge. In 990 the Hillary Commission for Sport, Fitness and Leisure introduced a national programme to remind all New Zealand that fair play is the ‘essence of participation’ in sport. I believe it is most important that children develop good sporting behaviour, not simply with their opponents but with teachers, officials and competition. The gentle inclusion of some sort of completion element into modified games should exist in school sports. Competition is not simply winning against another team. I define it as a possible internal challenge for an individual, or group.
Murdoch, E., Chapter 4 Physical Education and Sport: The Interface in Armstrong, N., New Directions in Physical Education. Vol 2
Stortart, B. (200). Uncomfortable Bedfellows: Sport and Phsyical Education, a Problematic Relationship Journal Physical Education. Vol 33 No. 1, March.
Moving Through Sport: From Junior and Adult. Hillary Commission.
Here are some commom vocabulary and phrases that are commonly used in the classroom.
Greetings |
|
| Nau mai!/Haere mai! | Welcome! |
| Tēnā koe | Hello to one person |
| Tēnā kōrua | Hello to two people |
| Tēnā koutou | Hello to more than two people |
| Kia ora | Hi! |
| Ata mārie | Good morning |
| Ahiahi mārie | Good afternoon |
| Pō mārie | Good evening |
| Kei te pēhea koe? | How are you? |
| Kei to pai | I’m fine |
Farewells |
|
| Ka kite anō | See you! |
| Kua hoki au | I’m off! |
| Hei konā rā | Bye (said to the one leaving or one the phone) |
| Hei konā rā | Bye (said to the one staying) |
| Haere atu rā | Bye (said to the one staying) |
| Hoki pai atu | Safe return! |
Introductions |
|
| Ko ___________ tēnei | This is ____________ |
| Ko wai tōu ingoa? | What is your name? |
| Ko____________ | (name) |
| Nō hea koe? | Where are you from? |
| Nō ___________ | (place) |
| Me hongi tāua | Let’s hongi |
This article is about a group planning experience I had in my Social Studies courses. We had to plan a social studies unit and incorporate the inquiry learning process.
The inquiry process is being emphasised in social studies because it gives children the opportunity to explore key issues in different settings, develop core concepts and skills as well as acquiring knowledge. It importantly encourages children to become curious and research becomes self-motivated and use higher order thinking skills . The inquiry process is being emphasised because children can think about the local community that can relate to them and beyond. The children take ownership of their research, including children of high and low abilities. I have outlined a few issues including choosing better quality questions and getting the children to do a process skill but not know them how – and these issues can be overcome. The group unit posed a few challenges that we as a group overcame. By using the readings I realised the importance of modeling, using critical thinking and considerations for grouping the children.
Before the children begin to formulate their ideas about how they fit into that larger world, they need to understand what that larger world consists of. As a result they are full of questions. The inquiry process is all about asking questions – children are encouraged to ask the questions that will motivate them to answer them (as mentioned before, to be ‘curious’). Bond, T states if we want pupils to gain understanding, they must be put into situations where they have to make decisions, share understandings, apply ideas and concepts and also have the opportunity to reflect. The teacher helps ensure that the students ask good questions, questions that can be answered and will produce meaningful answers so the children achieve a greater understanding. An inquiry process gives children this opportunity, and allows them to experience the rewards that come from finding the answers to good, challenging questions.
One of most noticeable characteristics of an inquiry is that the children have more say, “not only what they learn, but how they learn it” (Church, N. 2002). Church, N (2002) has observed in her classroom that the extra responsibility that the children come across allow the ‘leaders’ in the classroom to grow, not only in their leadership, but their ability to work with each other. The inquiry process is also beneficial for the more ‘reserved’ children. Once children have the experience of their input being valued in a situation where they have an active role, they can become more confident and put more input in. This skill is a crucial skills in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework, under social and co-operative skills. Sewell. A & St George Allison states historically that this process was used as a means to challenge and enrich the minds of gifted learners. However it is now suggested that a range of abilities can benefit from inquiry, as witnessed by Church, N who has seen confidence grow.(2002).
One of the issues involved in implementing an inquiry process is the quality of the questions produced by the children. The teacher has to ensure that the children don’t come up with the same boring questions that they tend to ask, for example, “what is ….., where is……”. The children needs to ask questions that will challenge their thinking. The teacher has to encourage the children to use higher order thinking, to ensure quality questions. Higher order thinking skills, such as, “compare, explain, analyse, predict, construct and interpret” are are heavily dependent on a variety of literacy skills and processes. For example in social studies, students must be able to understand specialised vocabulary, identify key pieces of information within text, determine what is fact and opinion, relate information across text, connect new information to prior knowledge and synthesise the information to make meaning. Teachers recognise that literacy problems can impede student progress and create barriers to understanding social studies context. To help teaching social studies, teachers need to integrate literacy strategies into their content area teaching, organise information about research based instructional strategies, construct separate lesson plans, activities and organise resources.
Gawith, G. (2002) states that there was very little evidence of teachers showing students HOW to shape questions and analyse information. His research shows that teachers assumed students would be able to go from a teacher-defined purpose to precise information. Sometimes when information was retrieved, there was often little evidence of analysis, or reflection on the ideas, contents, facts etc. He states that some children saw the purpose as finding the information and reproducing it in some way with little understanding and no critical analysis.
I quite enjoyed using the inquiry process as I planned with my group because after doing it I realised that I had just used some crucial skills that the children would use! First all deciding on our topic proved to be harder than we thought. We had to decide a topic that wasn’t too confined yet a topic that was too broad. We wanted to relate it within a New Zealand context, and involve the local community. Firstly we thought of the police, but then we found it would be too difficult to break it into sub-groups. So we adapted the idea to important people in the community so children could also inquire about the fire service and ambulance service. We thought it would relate better to the children to start off with by relating the community service roles to current events. By doing this we would hope the children to achieve how important these people are in crisis. It was challenging to decide on which sub-lesson we would teach for the children to complete a task. For example, we decided the children were to write an e-mail to a member of a community service. To ensure that the children would obtain the information they would need need we thought it was important to teach the format of an e-mail to send. We thought it was also important to choose and inform the service they were e-mailing so they knew our purpose and to better answer the children’s’ questions. To prevent a ‘gold rush’ of children to one particular source our group thought it was a good idea to rotate around the different resources. If we went to the library, the children wouldn’t all run to the computers! (I saw that happen in a few instances at an intermediate placement). Another challenging experience was deciding on an assessment for the topic. I’ve found on placement that the children have been really motivated once they have a goal to work towards. We brainstormed the possibilities and thought it was a good idea for the children to role play in groups their chosen community service.
To the address the issue of children not constructing ‘beefy’ questions, I would use the “key questions” instead of “WWWWH”. This would ensure more interesting questions. As modelled in our lecture, I would use a compulsory question that covers the curriculum. By having a compulsory, the children have a good example of what is expected. To overcome to issue of the children who have literacy needs I could have a short a sub-lesson on defining the beginnings of higher-order questions. I also would also integrate higher-order questions in all aspects of the classroom, especially reading. I remember in school I had the impression that social studies was the time for ‘hard’ question that I had not had a lot of experience at. Higher-order questions should be part of the everyday classroom – not just social studies. To overcome the issue of analysing information I would take a sub-lesson on finding relevant information within a text by highlighting, reading topic sentences of a paragraph, re-wording etc, and include that skill in the ‘process skills’ part of my unit. I’ve seen a few children’s’ research information where they have printed pages and pages of internet information because it looked good, and they did not even use it. I would ensure that children reflect on how useful a piece of information was. It’s important to know the needs of your classroom and not to over-estimate their abilities, especially with e-mails and internet. I have also seen children copy information straight onto their good copy without even making sense of what the words means. On a previous placement I have observed my associate incoporate social studies into her spelling programme. This was as excellent idea as the children actually understood the words’ meanings.
The suggested inquiry readings have had a significant impact on my views on the inquiry process. If I did an inquiry before this class without the readings I would of probably over-estimated the capabilities and not thought through sub-lessons on teaching the sub-skills. I found Bond, T’s reading view on ‘information literacy skills and processes’ quite useful. It mentions how to extend the children from technical literacy to critical literacy. Critical literacy combined with reflection play a major role in the deepening of the children’s understanding. Gawith, G (1991) speaks of the importance of modeling, especially before children do a brainstorm. I remember in primary school when the teacher said “get out your pen and paper and do a brainstorm”. Well of course I didn’t know anything about the topic so I sat in silence while trying to peep at others’ ideas. This reading has influenced my view on a ‘simple’ brainstorm, and will help me to “gaps in their knowledge”.This same reading has also influenced my view and given me ideas on grouping. Depending on the needs of the class, the teacher could set mixed ability groups so the more able could help the less able, swapping the different roles and using buddy systems within the group.
In conclusion, after planning a unit with a group, reflecting on benefits and issues, and examining the readings, I feel more confident to plan and implement an inquiry unit. Through this learning process I have taken into consideration what would make a more successful inquiry unit which starts from day one of choosing a topic, knowing the needs of the class, how to immerse the class before even planning the activities.