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.

If it can't be measured it doesn't count

In the school system, and I would suggest in many other institutions and businesses, we are constantly told that if we can't measure it we shouldn't put it in our long term plans for improvement. We often do the same thing in our classrooms. If we struggle to work out how we can attach a percentage or grade to a students learning we often discount that learning by not reporting on it. My personal opinion is that we have gone too far this way. I agree to be able to measure something and see growth/improvement is very useful. But if we only ever base success around the things that provide numerical data we are missing some very important things. The following quote sums this up nicely. 

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts". Albert Einstein


Schools need to be careful that they do not discount things like student well being, mentoring, student motivation, camps, the Arts, recess (in the U.S.A. some schools cut recess), physical activity etc..... in favour of putting more time into the things that are more easily measured and seen as more traditional measures of student success.