5th Grade Sport Ed Seasons

 

Once again this year I decided to use the Sport Ed model as the focus for my 5th grade classes. Last year I had had tremendous success in skill acquisition, cooperative growth, and overall student engagement and I was greatly looking forward to build upon the solid foundation I already had to make it better. Unfortunately I was only able to make it through 2 and a half seasons before Covid struck and we switched to online learning, but despite the fact that I wasn't able to fully utilize this model year round I was still thrilled with the outcomes that resulted from our few seasons.

During these seasons I kept many of the elements the same that were successful the prior year, but I made sure to tweak several things as well. For example, though I loved the fact that each student had a job, students were not always clear the previous year on why they received the grade that they did for their job. To address this, after each student had been assigned a job within their team I had all of the students group together with members of the other teams who had the same job (coaches sat with coaches, publicists sat with publicists, etc.). Once together I had them create a list to give to me that clearly outlined what their daily duties and expectations were. This made it very easy to assess them on whether or not they had completed their job on a daily basis and allowed the students to have ownership and clarity on what their role was. I also made a few changes to the overall structure of the day and played with a few new roles. For example, instead of simply posting Spirit Scores on Seesaw we would have a "Spirit Meeting" at the end of each class where Spirit Captains would stand up and say one compliment and one area for improvement for the team that they played against. During our Oval Ball unit I also added a Skills Coach who's sole role was to research how to perform the skills necessary to be successful and coach the members of their team on how to execute them more efficiently. A few additional changes included changing Volleyball to a Spikeball Season, adding a Media Specialist role to record and analyze games, assigning point values for performing daily roles in addition to performance in games, and adding daily and seasonal "feats".

Overall, though it was a bummer that we weren't able to complete all of the Sport Ed seasons that I had hoped for the year I was thoroughly impressed with the outcomes for the few seasons we did have. As with last year it was so cool to see students grow with each other and feel the sense of belonging and ownership that comes from being a part of a team. I also felt that the new roles and adjustments to structure made the classes even better and I can't wait to continue to tweak and improve these seasons to make them better. If you want more information on how I structured the seasons feel free to check out last years post, or click on the Sport Ed Season links on my PE Page.

Finished Tournament Bracket

Spikeball Pre-Tournament Bracket

Students reflecting after the Ultimate season