​Pokemon Go and the Concept of Evolving
Student Evolution
If you spent your summer on a desert island, you may have missed the latest action based app, Pokemon Go!  This app is a game for all ages that requires players to move around their community to catch Pokemon with their cellular device.  If you have no idea what a Pokemon is, here is the definition from Pokemon.com:

Pokémon are creatures of all shapes and sizes who live in the wild or alongside humans. For the most part, Pokémon do not speak except to utter their names. Pokémon are raised and commanded by their owners (called “Trainers”). During their adventures, Pokémon grow and become more experienced and even, on occasion, evolve into stronger Pokémon. There are currently more than 700 creatures that inhabit the Pokémon universe.

Sound familiar?!  As the teachers/trainers of our own little creatures, we provide children with experiences to help them grow and evolve into stronger, smarter, healthier human beings.  I have 380 of my own little Pokemon at Southdown Primary. Therefore, to take advantage of the pop culture craze, I decided to merge the two worlds and use Pokemon to help our students set goals, evaluate their progress and evolve into physically literate creatures. I had no idea how powerful the analogy would become for some students.
Here is an example, using a conversation I had with a kindergarten student:
Teacher:  Bobby, why are you sitting here?
Bobby:     I can’t jump rope.
Teacher:  How do you know?  Look here, right now you are inside the Pokeball.  You’re getting ready to learn.  Once you start trying you will start evolving into a Caterpie.
Bobby:  I want to become a Metapod!
Bobby jumped up and started trying.  He quickly evolved into a Caterpie and soon became a Metapod.  He continues to jump and strives to become a Butterfree.
 
The Pokemon concept has taken on a life of its own.  As different scenarios arise, new Pokemon programs get implemented.  We now have a Pokemon advisory board made up of a group of boys that were formerly off task and disruptive.  They advise us on which Pokemon can be used to represent different skills.  Our 4th graders have personal avatars and earn Pokemon as they accomplish tasks.  We are currently working on a physical activity version of Pokemon Go to support vocabulary and will begin playing it with small groups of students during dismissal.
 
If you are currently using Pokemon as a theme in your gymnasium, please include me in your Tweets, Shares, and Pins!  Let’s keep evolving!

Cleaning Up the Messy Backyard
by Lynn Hefele

I must admit, I was a little shocked a few years back when I discovered that the “Messy Backyard” was in “The PE Hall of Shame.”  I had been using this activity to teach overhand throwing for years and it was the inspiration for my first Literature Enhanced Physical Education fictional story.

According to the “Hall of Shame,” (Inducted: 1994) The Messy Backyard  is a misbegotten and mindless creation where students on opposing teams frantically throw objects over a barrier into the other team’s court until the whistle is blown.  The objects are counted and a winner is determined.  Factor in students’ inabilities to count so many objects, the ignored stop signal, blind luck and the inevitable piercing screams of young children and you have one of the worst games of all time. (http://www.pecentral.org/professional/hos/index.html)

My reaction to this description of the activity was, “What? That’s not my Clean Up Your Backyard!”  In my opinion, the problem is not with the activity but in the implementation of the activity. 

First, any activity that has a motivational objective (i.e. cleaning up your yard) that gets every child moving to a level of moderate to vigorous physical activity has some merit.  

I will admit, when I first started teaching this activity, I was blinded by the motion.  To me, having every child moving, instead of waiting their turn to take a single throw was brilliant.  It wasn't until after I had published “Clean Up Your Backyard” that I received constructive criticism on my implementation of the lesson.

That is when I realized that if the objective of the lesson was to teach throwing, then the frenzy must be controlled.  Students must understand that while speed will assist in the motivational objective of cleaning up the backyard, the true objective of the lesson is to learn to throw correctly.  Therefore, it is imperative that the teacher provide the students with teaching cues prior to the start of the activity, discuss the rubric that will be used to assess student learning, and continuously provide feedback to students during the activity that forces students to focus on learning while playing. 

One of the things I love the most about this activity is that it inherently allows students the freedom to differentiate their own learning.  Weaker students will move right up to the net to throw while more experienced students will retrieve a ball from the back wall and launch it from far away. 

However, even within this relaxed framework, structure can take place to address the needs of all students.  For example, during the first lesson with my kindergarten students, I like to let them explore by simply asking them to get the garbage over the net.  Then with each successive round of play (without scoring), I then begin to add an overhand throwing cue.  For example, “See if you can get the ball over the net by bringing the ball back behind your ear and making the letter L with your elbow.”  The next round, I will add stepping in opposition and in the final round, starting with the side to the target. 

With older students, I have created independent learning stations.  By placing tape on the floor that mirrors the correct footwork, students that are in the developing stage of the skill can practice without direct teacher supervision.  I also create stations that depict an exaggerated step and challenge the students to experiment with a short stride and a long stride.  We make a hypothesis, experiment, and then discuss the results.  Finally, with older students we introduce the “crow hop” and discuss when it is used in the game of baseball.

Here are what the learning station look like:




Next, we add targets to work on throwing for accuracy.  Mylar balloons are attached to cones and distributed around the gym at varying distances and heights from the dividing line.  We then use independent learning stations with the lead foot pointing in different directions and experiment with where to step in relation to the target.

I’m Done, I’m Done, I’m Done with Level 1!

“I wish I were a 5 year old at Highland Park Elementary School in Autstin, Texas so that I could have Jim DeLine as a physical education teacher!” – Lynn Hefele

I just attended the #National PE Institute in Asheville, NC where I had the opportunity to witness my vision of Elementary P.E. perfection!  Jim DeLine’s first session, Go Green, Go Lean, Assessment Routines was supposed to focus on ways to assess cognitive knowledge without a paper and pencil; but it was very clear that there was much more to learn from this session than assessments. 



Cast of Characters

Jim’s classroom is filled with imaginary, evil, wellness robbing, villains like; Sherriff Lazy Bones, Sinister Supersizer, the Fat Cats, and Couch Potato Au Gratin.  Through the use of these amazing characters, complete with accents, Jim is able to weave wellness, anatomy, and nutrition concepts into any skill centered lesson.  For example, in the football unit, his team, the Scotties, are trying to conquer the Fat Cats by using plays that require pantomiming fitness activities. 

P.E. Power Words

Classroom management in Jim’s world is clearly defined and hysterically funny.  Expectations are scripted with a teacher statement and a student response.  For example, instead of a whistle or a freeze, Jim says “Hey team!” and the students respond with “Hey Coach!” and then turn and face the teacher.  Granted, Jim has a football coach/military/comedian way of saying things to grab your attention; but the premise is simple, have the students show that they have heard the command with a verbal and/or physical response that draws the attention of all the students in the gym. Brilliant!

Teaching in Levels

Jim’s lessons are broken up into levels.  He has obviously chosen an outcome and broken it down into small, attainable learning objectives.  Teaching this way has many advantages.  First, students start at the very basic skill and attain success before moving on.  Second, the amount of time spent on instruction is small which keeps students focused on the objective and well behaved.  Finally, at the end of each round there’s a dance!  “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done with Level 1!”-“I’m through, I’m through, I’m though with Level 2!”

Holding Students Responsible

The feeling in Jim’s gym is that you are part of a team and you have an important role in it.  If you’re sitting out, you will be asked to do the wave, be a coach, or gather equipment.  You got the impression that your individual presence made a difference to the team.  The pace of the class was quick and expectations were high.

Making Students Feel Good

The reason you felt that you were part of the team was that your individual contribution did not go unnoticed.  Positive reinforcement was both verbal and demonstratively physical!  A great pass during his “Think Outside the Ball- What’s in Your W.A.L.L.E.T” session would not only get you a heartfelt “Great Pass!” but also a class wide Cha-Cha Dance.

Sending a Message to Parents

The final activity of his last session was called the William Tell Overture.  I’ll be using it as the opening ceremony to my field day this year.  This activity is a full class concert of rhythmic movement with a message.  Jugglers represented the juggling of priorities and the importance of Physical Education.  The ball handlers represented the importance of children’s health/well-being and our determination to not to drop the ball.  Ribbon dancers represented the need to wave the flag in support of quality Physical Education and the stretch bands represented the need to stretch the budget to include P.E.

The List Goes On

I could go on and on with best practice ideas, assessments, interdisciplinary concepts and Brain, Academic, Movement Activities but I try to keep these blogs under two pages! I promise to blog about him again after he presents at our local APHERD conference.  Here is his webpage: http://www.gym-solutions.com/. I don’t know what he costs but he is worth every single penny.

We have a new puppy.  Being a basketball family, we decided to call her “Buckets.”  She is an adorable little Chocolate Labrador Retriever.  Over these first few weeks of parenthood, I am constantly reminded of my Southdown students as we begin the process of socializing her into our household.

Rock Star Status

One of the greatest things about having a dog and being an Elementary PE teacher is that I always feel like a rock star.  Every single time I walk into the house, Buckets wags that whip-like tail back and forth and pounces forward to give me kisses.  Likewise, my elementary school students will hang out of bus windows; yell down the hall or run across the playground to get my attention.  It’s like being Beyonce without the paparazzi.  However, while my dog will continue to treat me like royalty no matter what I do, it is incumbent upon me as the teacher to foster a continually positive relationship with my students.

The Power of Positive- “You can Catch More Flies with Honey than with Vinegar.”

Buckets loves to have her tummy rubbed.  We use cute little “baby talk” when we want her to do something and we pat her head when she does something terrific, like going out her doggy door.  Thankfully, physical education is one of the only areas of education where touching students is still acceptable.  High fives, a pound or a turkey are all positive touches P.E. teachers and coaches use to acknowledge student performance.  (High five- open palm to open palm, Pound- fist to fist, Turkey- wide open hand to fist.)   A simple gesture with a “Duchene Smile” goes a long way to making students feel special when they have done something terrific.  I try to encourage my students to use them as well.

Training Myself to be Positive

Somehow, with puppies it is easy to be positive.  Teaching hundreds of children every day can sometimes bring out the negative in even the Mary Poppins of teachers.   I read somewhere that you need to say 10 positives to every one negative.  I don’t know if there is any science behind that but I believe the sentiment to be true.  Here is a trick that I use every now and then.  I take 10 pennies and put them in my left pocket at the beginning of the class.  Every time I make a positive statement to a student, I move a penny to my right pocket.  I can use this personal reminder with the whole class or with that one student that I find myself having difficulty staying positive with.

Tangible Rewards

I know there are some people that are against tangible rewards.  I myself am not a fan of the “everyone gets a trophy” concept; however, there is no denying that Buckets and my students respond to the smallest cookie or trinket.  I try to save the tangible rewards for special occasions.  I also believe it is important to wean both Buckets and my students from extrinsic motivators once they understand the behavior that is expected.  I like to use stickers, certificates, life size pictures (see Wall of Champs) and any of the freebies I have picked up from AHPERD conventions.  

Regression

We had Buckets for less than a week and she was going out of her dog door and “doing her business” outside.  What proud parents we were.  I posted to Facebook and bragged about how brilliant our little girl was until she did her “business” in the dining room during the second week.  Whether it is as simple as not completely understanding the expectations or whether it is attention getting behavior, our puppies and elementary school students sometimes regress.  I find it happens a lot just before or right after a vacation with my students.  The expectations at home are not always the same as they are at school.  I once sat through a lecture about how we need to understand the culture that our students are coming from and adapt our programs to their culture.  I can understand and appreciate where my students are coming from; however, just as we expect everyone in society to modify their behavior when they walk into a religious building, a museum, or a library, I believe we should expect our students to abide by the rules of behavior in our educational setting.  Regression can be expected.  I believe in reteaching respectful, responsible and safe behavior in the physical education setting and keeping standards high.

Consequences

Buckets has sharp as razor baby teeth and she loves to use them!  We give her a stern “No” and replace with a biting appropriate toy.  In my classroom, I try to reprimand using “the look” first.  I can’t really describe “the look” but it seems to work for most students.  I also try to use humor without sarcasm to defuse a situation when possible.  In physical education, I think we are lucky in that all sports use some kind of negative reinforcement to deter rule infractions.  I will explain to students that in hockey a penalty results in time spent in a box watching the rest of your team play without you.  In basketball, the other team might get a free shot at the basket.  Setting up negative reinforcers in PE makes sense.  I often use the term, “sitting out for safety,” when I feel that a student is being a danger to himself or others.   While I believe that there should be concrete, consistent, appropriate consequences for inappropriate actions in the gymnasium, I also believe it should be one of the tools used and not the only tool in your toolbox.  Remember the definition of insanity- “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”  If all you are doing is punishing and it is not changing behavior, you need to try something else!

Good Luck

Buckets is now 11 weeks old!  She is house trained, can come, sit and shake… when she wants to!  Just like my students, learning to be socially appropriate takes time and practice.  Some students will pick up social cues just by watching, while others will need structured instruction and practice.  For these students, patience and a plan are necessary.  As you enter next year and a new group of students, may you be prepared with a behavioral plan, have the patience to stay positive and faith in your students.

At risk of showing my age, I could spend hours watching the Flintstones and Gilligan’s Island as a child.  Countless episodes of shameless soap operas like the Guiding Light were viewed in college, Thirty-Something and the Wonder Years post-college, ER and any number of laugh-out-loud sitcoms during my child raising years.

Recently, something has changed and I just can’t zone out anymore.  It may be because my home is filled with ESPN watching, remote controlling men, but I suspect the more accurate reason is I just don’t find television mentally stimulating anymore.  Instead, I find myself searching for new things to learn and do.  I am still on the couch in front of the TV but my computer is humming between Twitter, Linkedin, Gmail and Facebook. I could go hours reading what people are doing around the world in their PE programs but even more satisfying is learning something new and using it to develop something for my PE program, LEPEinc. or the NYS AHPERD Suffolk Zone. 

Over the past couple of years, I have taught myself how to publish books using Indesign and upload them to Amazon, format ebooks for Lulu.com, develop websites using Weebly, create an Eboard for my students, download and convert videos from Youtube to music for my Ipad, create videos using Powerpoint presentations and countless other things that just seem to become necessary.  It is absolutely amazing to me that if you need to get something done, all you have to do is ask someone in a social networking forum or Google it!

I have been on summer vacation for less than a week now.  While I have set goals to paint the bedroom and fix countless things around the house; finishing “Swish,” my next teacher resource, starting a Twitter account for the Suffolk Zone, developing a PE app for Southdown, setting up a QR code for my school website and getting started on my physical education professional developments sound much more appealing. 

Here are the PD’s I have so far.  I think some of you will be interested in joining in.

·         Go to the National PE Institute July 28-30th

·         Listen to the PE Geek and #physed podcasts

·         View Crystal and Jo’s Excellent PE Adventure

·         Start reading Spark by John J. Ratey as part of the PhysicalEducator book club

·         Read Gracious_PE’s paper.li daily

·         Watch Don Puckett’s Physical Education Games DVD’s

·         Review the #pechats

If anyone out there has any other great PD’s, please send them along!  Now, it’s time to get up off the couch, play with my new puppy “Buckets” and go for a bike ride!  Have a great summer!

Tomorrow is the last day of school.  These last two days are half days and we spend the afternoons cleaning the office and putting things in their place for next year.  This means taking down our word wall and all the common core related teaching tools that have gone up over the year.  Likewise, it is time for each of our P.E. Champions to come down from their imaginary pedestals and head home with their owners.

At the beginning of the year, one of my goals was to develop our e-board.  An e-board is a very simplistic website for teachers.  I am not a huge fan of this platform because it is very restrictive but I understand why the district uses it.  I do, however, love the calendar tab.  Shortly into the school year, I decided to put something P.E. or Health related on every day to promote cognitive, social and physical learning outside of the school day.  As it would turnout, developing the e-calendar would be the easy part.  Getting students to visit it would be trickier.

I sent home a notice to parents about the e-board only to realize that many of our students did not have access to computers at home.  So, the next step was finding a time to teach the students how to login on to the e-board from their classroom computers.  This definitely increased the number of students that could visit the site but didn’t necessarily increase the number of students that would visit the site.

Next, I implemented the question of the week.  On Monday of each week, a question was posted that related to the unit we were teaching.  Students could submit their answer directly to the website via e-notes.  At the end of each week, all of the students that answered the question correctly got their name put in a hat.  We then pulled a name from the hat and the winner received some type of reward.

At first, the rewards were small purchased educational, recreational, or P.E. related products.  It soon became clear that this would be unsustainable.  I needed something that didn't cost anything but motivated the students. 

The ANSWER- life size P.E. Champions!  Not only were students motivated to get their picture up on the wall, but the voice bubbles attached also provided visual and written cues for learning movement, muscles groups and P.E. vocabulary.  Many of the questions of the week and P.E. Champion cues related directly to our Student Learning Objectives.  An ADDED BONUS- anytime an assembly took place in the gym, parents and administrators could see evidence of teaching in physical education.

Finally, we added the Student/Teacher P.E. Challenges.  Our school has a Splash Assembly bi-monthly to recognize student citizenship.  Our principal allowed us to add a physical challenge.  Any student that answered the P.E. Question of the Week correctly during the month could enter the challenge.  We had a push-up contest, a plank contest and a jump rope contest where the students tried to “Beat the Teach.”  These contests not only increased website participation but increased student motivation during our muscular strength and endurance units.

Final total of eboard visits 1524!  Not bad for the first year.  My goal for next year is 2500.  The PLAN- Develop an Eboard App so students can access the website on tablets and phones.  Also, I will be printing PE business cards for back to school night with the website, app and QR code on it.  Maybe even a Southdown PE Facebook page and Twitter account!

(Eboard Calender - http://www1.eboard.com/eboard/servlet/BoardServlet?ACTION=TAB_SHOW&ACTION_ON=TAB&OBJECT_ID=652682&SITE_NAME=Huntington&BOARD_NAME=lhefele-tmatthews&SESSION_ID=x2a5311jx6723l1886&TAB_ID=652682&Month=3&Year=2014)

(PS- To make life size Champs, insert a picture into an Excel document and drag it to the size you would like.  A few pointers: adjust the margins so that you don't waste a lot of paper; use a glue stick to connect the pages; printer ink is expensive so have students wear light color clothes; print in black and white and use a crayon to color the white in.  Laminate and post!)

Read it, Say it, Do it, and Teach It!

We started batting this week.  Normally, that would equate to blue skies and sunshine!  True happiness for students and teachers alike in the Northeast, except for this year!  We got outside on Monday and now it is back to frigid temperatures and rain!  Despite the dreariness of the week, we have had a spectacular batting unit thus far!

We started the week by reading “Widget’s Batting Lesson,” a fictional story about a group of children teaching an alien boy how to bat.  The story gives visual and verbal cues for batting off a tee.  Widget makes many of the mistakes your students  will make and his peers give him coaching advice to correct his mistakes.

We then follow the story line of the book.  Each time a batter steps up to the plate, his peer coaches check him off on the key points of his stance.  Coach one is the hand checker, Coach 2 is the 'sweet spot' checker and Coach 3 is the elbow checker.  Once the batter has received the coaches’ okay, he may swing.

As the days have progressed, we have seen true progress in our batting skills.  The reason is educationally simple; read it, say it, do it, and teach it!  Batting is one of those skills that require waiting your turn.  You simply can’t have every students batting at the same time.  Having students in a coaching box, verbally giving the cues that they need to exhibit when they get up to bat, ensures that they are processing the information instead of just sitting and waiting.  My job then becomes more of a general manager.  I walk along the baseline and coach the coaches, asking questions for understanding.  “Does your player have the correct hand on top?”  “It looks like your player is too close to the tee, what does he need to do in order to line the 'sweet spot' up with the ball?”

Now that we are indoors and have even less space, we have added a rotation for practicing the sit and reach test and kettle bell exercises.  Not one student is without a purpose!

Amazingly, even without the sunshine, true happiness!