5th Grade Sport Ed Seasons

This year with my 5th grade students I decided to try something new and teach the entire year using the Sport Education Model. I had used this model for a few units at Gilman so I was already familiar with it, but it was still relatively new to ICS. The previous year the elementary PE teacher had introduced it to his 5th grade students and it was very successful, so after having a few discussions with him and the rest of my department I decided to run with it for the whole year. I could not have been more impressed with the outcome. Over the school year it was incredible to see the growth of each of my students during every unit from a physical literacy perspective, but it was also amazing to see how they grew as a community as well. There were numerous times where students would be forced to work on the same team as someone they didn't initially care for, but as each season went on it was so cool to see each student take ownership of their responsibilities, overcome personal reservations and insecurities, and resolve conflicts.

In each unit students coaches were chosen who then picked teams with me outside of class. The students then worked with those teams for the remainder of the unit with each student having their own Job or Role. At the beginning of the season there would be a few days where the teams would learn the rules and the skills needed for the game or project, but after the first few days the units were largely student run. Once all the skills were learned the students would start class by warming up and running practices within their team, then they would have the remainder of the class to either work on their routine (dance/parkour) or compete with other teams in their class.

For the competitive seasons students would self-officiate their own games and then reflect on their performance and complete Spirit Scores to assess how they felt their opponents performed. After several days of practice/game play the unit then climaxed with a multi-day tournament. For this tournament I would combine 2 classes during each PE block so they could compete with students from other classes. Eventually when there were only 2 teams from all 4 classes left in tournament play we would host a championship event. The students would go wild for this championship event and come with posters, cheers, and dressed to support their team. Once the final championship game was over I would then say a few final encouraging words and then we would end out the season with each team reflecting on their season.

As I said above, these units all ended up being far more successful than I had initially anticipated and they were tons of fun. It was a lot of work for me on the front end, but once the students were comfortable with the flow of each class the days basically ran themselves. It was so cool to see each student take ownership and their final project/performances were incredible. Below and above you'll see a few of the student made Team Logos that I collected over the year and if you would like more information about each of the units feel free to check out the links to a few of my units on my PE page.