SEPEP Basketball

The Sport Education in Physical Education Program (SEPEP) is a program that allows students to participate in a sporting unit that is centred around a social structure. Traditionally this has been asking students to undertake roles such as captain, coach, umpire, association president, secretary and so on. This structure allows for a sporting competition to take place and provides the opportunity for students to experience a role they will/may encounter if they are a member of a sporting organisation. These roles provide opportunities to develop communication and leadership skills.

Having done this in the past, and by my own admission not very well, I have decided to try a different take on the process keeping some of the more traditional roles while including some roles that allowed for more creativity. Part of the changes I have made involve using a blog and the iPad. Unfortunately only limited use of the iPad at the moment. If I had a class set I would be utilising them for each role undertaken by the students. However I only have one which will be used by students undertaking the commentater role.

The sport that I am basing this program around is basketball.

Change number 1 - Use a blog as the central place for all required information, resources and student tasks. Each student has a role and each role requires the posting of weekly information. Access to a computer suite on the last lesson of every week will allow us to complete tasks based on the games played that week.

Change number 2 - Provide a central site (blog) with resources and videos linked to the sport (basketball). This will assist the students undertaking this role as they will be running sessions with their teams.

Change number 3 - Moving away from the 'traditional' roles for students to undertake. There are 6 students per team in three teams and 5 in one team. The traditional roles I have kept are role 1 Captain/Coach, role 2 Scorer/Timekeepr and role 3 Umpire. The new roles which I have never had before and hopefully offer a point of difference from past models I have used are role 4 News Reporter, role 5 Photographer and role 6 Commentator. Each of these roles is explained on the Student Roles and Responsibilities page on the site. If I had access to another iPad I would have like to have added 'Film Crew' to this list (film with iPad and use iMovie to edit) but unfortunately only have one iPad which will be used to record the commentary of each game.

For a basic structure to the term you can go to the page titled 7 Week Time line and Assessment on the site.

I have already considered changes I would make the next time to the type of tech I would get students to use and the actual roles undertaken by students. But thats for next time........

If you would like to visit our 7/8 Basketball SEPEP site click here.

I would like to thank pegeek Jared Robinson for a post he wrote about SEPEP  which helped motivate me to try something different.

The Shadow Obstacle Game

I first saw this great idea at the end of 2011. It is an idea created by Joe Matulis which I have used with my junior PE classes once at the end of last year and with my Receptions just recently at the end of term 1 this year. It is a great idea and one the students really enjoy. The game involves projecting Power Point slides onto the gym wall (as large as possible). These slides contain objects following movement paths. When the students move across the slide their shadow becomes a part of the slide. The students have to make their shadow dodge the objects moving around on the slide. The game really makes the students think about how they need to move to successfully get through a slide. It is also a great collaborative activity as it provides many opportunities for students to share what works and what doesn't.

My March 30 Day Challenge

I'm working with my pastoral care class to complete one 30 day callenge each month beginning March this year. This means our first challenge is underway. I have decided to do a 30 Day Challenge each month as well and record how |I have gone with this. My March challenge has been to not swear. Now it's not that I go around swearing in class or at school but outside of school |I would like to reduce the amount of times I swear. So 13 days into my challenge how am |I going? $%#*@ average. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. I did not set myself each day to achieve this. From now on I will remind myself of what it is |I want to achieve.
2. It was easy to not focus on my challenge as there are many other things that are going on making it difficult to remember something like this.

Although I have not completely stopped swearing I have reduced my swearing which I think is a positive. It will be interesting to see if i can eliminate swearing further from my daily life.

The initial concept came from Matt Cutts and a TED talk he presented.

I can now view video in my gym on a permanent large screen!

I have always, were possible, tried to use video to assist with student learning and understanding of skill development in sport. However this is not easy when I don't have any sort of permanent viewing screen or data projector in our school gym. To remedy this I have borrowed out a data projector and am now storing it in my office in the gym and have asked the groundsman to assist me putting up a large screen.

Our gym has a mezene floor which is where I now set up the data projector and iPad to project onto a screen made of two white wood panels screwed to the wall. These wood panels are high above the gym floor making it easy for students to view a skill being played through my iPad.

Currently my Year 11/12 students are doing badminton and today our focus was on the smash. I was able to use a clip showing a badminton smash (40 seconds of video) which I had looping on my iPad. As I moved around to each group I was able to direct their attention to the video and talk them through the video, pointing out key aspects of the smash. I then ran them through a simple drill that had me feeding shuttles to the students to smash. It was great to be able direct students attention back to the video during the drill when required. The students watching the drill (2 students) also got to compare aspects of their peers performance to the video. By getting the spectators to verbalise to the person undertaking the drill assisted everyones learning.

Below is a couple of photos showing the largescreen in the school gym. There is only a blue screen up as I had to disconnect my iPad to take the photo. Once properly mounted the screen will be another 80cm higher. The screen is viewable from everywhere on the gym floor and the video can be clearly seen from the furtherest point in the gym.

Athletics - focusing on technique not measurement

At the start of every year I take my students through a unit on athletics, this year it is years 7, 8 and 9. Each year I teach the different events and associated skills and by the end students have recorded times, distances and heights for all events. Along with other observational data I have used those times, distances and heights to generate a grade. This year I have not been getting the students to measure any results. We started last week with their focus purely on developing technique.