Classroom Favorite's: Treasure Island

I don't know about the rest of you, but it just won't stop raining here in Virginia! Thankfully, my class was in health last week so the rain didn't have a huge impact, but now we're back in PE and the rain is really messing with our spring sports rotation. What can we do that is still educational, fun. and engaging for students while accommodating three classes in the gym? TREASURE ISLAND.

This game focuses on cooperative skills such as communication, teamwork, non-verbal communication and cues, as well as critical thinking. Students ask to play all the time as it is a class wide favorite and all ages (elementary, middle, and high school) can benefit from this activity.

Equipment is minimal and can be easily manipulated depending on your class size and equipment availability.

Equipment Needed:

• Cones (Optional)
• Hula Hoops or Mats
• Pool Noodles
• Jump Ropes
• Poly Spots
• Scooters

You can easily substitute any of these items for other equipment you have in your school. If you want the game to last longer, you can also add more types of equipment to this list.

Activity Directions:

     Students will attempt to get their entire team from one side of the gym to the other. That must use all of the equipment to get across and no part of their body is allowed to touch the floor. If they touch the floor, that individual must go back to the starting point. The mat (or hula hoop) in the middle acts as an island. They are allowed to stand in the island to assist teammates in crossing, but the island cannot move. Once the group has made it across once, they must select one of their items to give up. This should be a team decision, not just one or two people. They will then attempt to make it back across. Once completed, they will repeat the process of giving up an item and returning across until they have only one item left!

There are a few rules to remember as we move through this activity:

• Students should not be allowed to stand on top of scooters! Bottoms, knees, and bellies only.
• Honesty is key when acknowledging that a body part has touched the ground.
• Students are allowed to pick which piece they would like to forfeit.
• Encourage students to be creative while adhering to the game rules.

     Below you will find some of my favorites from my own classroom. I love how creative the kids can get with trying to make it across. We've seen "rockets" and jump rope balance beams, pull systems and rope lassos. There is never a dull moment in treasure island!

     I hope you are able to utilize Treasure Island in your own classroom with as much success as I have in mine! It's a fun game that works on so many different social and cooperative skills... The kids won't even realize they're learning.

How to Create Review Game Slideshows

Do you ever wonder how all of these review games are made? How do they link all the slides together? Where do you even start!? Well folks, you're in luck because today that's exactly what I plan on showing you.

1. Start by opening PowerPoint. I will be using PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, but the commands are virtually the same if you're using 2007.

2. Select your design.  I always do this first so I know how everything I set up will work. Click on the design tab and then pick your favorite. If you want to design a custom slideshow you can select your fonts under the design tab and your background by right clicking on the slide itself and selecting the file from your own computer.

3. Input your introductory information. This is pretty simple and no different from any other PowerPoint creation. 

4. Create your table. Now you can create your review game menu! Create a new slide and in the center area, click on the table icon. 

 This will bring up a dialogue box where you will select how many rows and columns you'd like. I'm selected four columns and five rows. This will create a four category, four question review game. If you'd like more categories, select more columns, if you'd like more questions, select more rows.

Your finalized table will look like this:

5. Input your categories and point values. This is simple insertion and is completely up to you and what you want your game to be about! I prefer my tables to be centered. Go to layout and then select the two centering tools.

Once I have my table set, I input the data I am going to hyperlink!

6. Add the number of slides you will need for your game. You will need two slides per question, one for the actual question and the other for the answer. I recommend labeling each slide as you go because it will make hyperlinking in the next step that much easier.

Once you have your slides set up, you're ready to hyperlink! Go back to your main menu slide and highlight the "100" for your first category. Once highlighted, go to the insert tab at the top of the program and hit "Hyperlink."

Once you've selected hyperlink a dialogue box will appear. You will need to select "Place in this document" and select the slide matching the game menu. For example, if you highlighted Weather 100 (like I did), you will want to make sure you select the Weather - 100 slide (this is why titling your slides in the previous step was so important).

After you've successfully hyperlinked your slide to the game menu, you will need to create a "back to menu" link as well. Go to the answer slide for the 100 question you just hyperlinked. Go back to insert and select text box. Draw your box in the bottom right corner of the slide and type in "Back to Menu." 

Repeat the hyperlinking process by highlighting the "Back to Menu" and select hyperlink, place in this document, and select the game menu slide.

7. Repeat for each slide. Repeat the hyperlinking process until you've reached the whole slideshow! A shortcut you can utilize is copying the text box "Back to Menu" and pasting it on the return slides. The hyperlink will stay in tact and it will save you a lot of time.

     See! It's that easy! If you're looking at these steps and thinking, "this is too much for me... I don't have enough time to do this" don't worry. I have review game templates in my store for four and six categories (with four questions per category).

Good luck with your creation!

Tips to Celebrate National Physical Fitness & Sport Month

There seem to be months for just about every cause nowadays and May is no different! Something near and dear to my heart is Physical Fitness and Sport Month, which is going on right now!

It's not too late to talk to your students, colleagues, and community about the importance of physical fitness. In fact, with state testing approaching for many of us, especially those in Virginia, educating on the importance of physical fitness can help students reduce stress and anxiety during test season! Keep reading to learn about the purpose of Physical Fitness and Sports Month, as well as how you can get your students, faculty, and community involved.

Why is Physical Fitness and Sports Month Important?

     According to the Center for Disease Control {CDC} 34.9 percent of adults in the United States are classified as obese. When we look at adults who are also classified as overweight that percentage double to 68.6 percent. The CDC also reports that 60 percent of adults do not participate in enough physical activity.  The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System found that 13.7 percent of high school students were obese, while 16.6 were classified as overweight. The estimated annual health care costs of obesity-related illness are $190.2 billion, which is 21 percent of the annual medical spending in the United States. Childhood obesity alone is responsible for $14 billion in direct medical costs annually. By promoting healthy habits to our students, faculty, and community, we can help build the foundation for a healthier population!

What are some benefits of regular physical activity?

• Improve muscular fitness, bone health, and heart health
• Lowers the risk of heart disease, type two diabetes, and some cancers
• Lowers the risk of falls and improves cognitive functioning
• Improved mood, happiness, and quality of life

What are some social benefits of participating in sports?

• Sportsmanship
• Enhanced cooperative skills
• Improved communication
• Improved discipline
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Honesty

What are some simple changes students, faculty, and the community can make?

• Take a walk after dinner as a family.
• If you're a pet owner, walk the dog an extra block or take a longer route.
• Perform simple body weight exercises during television commercials.
• Join a gym.
• Visit a local park and walk along the nature trails.

How can you promote Physical Fitness and Sports Month in school?

• Emphasize the importance of physical fitness with your students. This can be done through a simple comprehensive goal setting lesson.
• Work with core content teachers to promote physical activity in their classroom through brain and activity breaks.
• Create and place posters throughout the school building and provide copies for each teacher to place in their classrooms.
• Host a school-wide/community event: This could include a 5k, run/walk event, host a field day or healthy youth day, schedule a class field trip to a local facility to take an exercise class, or encourage students/staff to join sports leagues in the community.

What are some resources for brain break activities in the classroom?

GoNoodle is an online site that allows teacher and student login for physical activities. You can also add your own videos straight from YouTube! They have guided dancing, exercise videos, free dance, yoga/stretching, songs, KidzBop, and so much more!

Just Dance has an awesome YouTube channel full of guided dance videos to current songs kids love! Most of the videos are edited for language, but some of the dance moves in certain songs may not be age appropriate (depending on your classroom). I recommend previewing any video prior to playing it in class.

     If you are looking for more resources on how to promote Physical Fitness and Sports Month in your school, check out the US Department of Health and Human Resources here.

End of the Year: Fitness Testing

     It's that time of year again! As the school year begins to wind down and SOL testing commences (at least for those of us in Virginia), the PE departments at schools across the state begin the monotonous task of end of year (EOY) fitness testing. All too often, I see teachers simply moving through the motions without emphasizing why these tests are important or how they benefit students present level of physical fitness. This is the largest disservice we can give to our students and here's why...

1. Privacy in fitness testing. Too often we see the "old PE" style of fitness testing, where scores are compared to other students. This is no longer accepted practice and should be banished from all PE programs. Fitness testing and the associated scores should be for the eyes and ears of the individual student only. If they choose to share their scores, that is their choice, but it is not our responsibility to blast their scores to the world. Instead, we need to keep scores private and utilize them for goal setting.

2. Fitness testing is for everyone, not just for athletes. We all know our students. We know who the athletic students are and we know which students may fit into various other categories. We also need to know (and understand) that fitness testing needs to be done in a way that allows all students to succeed and feel comfortable. Personal goal setting allows us to personalize fitness testing to individual students, which in turn allows the to focus on their own goals as opposed to what other people in the class are doing. This also changes the dialogue among our students from "what score did you get" to "did you meet your goal." We would be naive to think they don't talk about their scores, so let's foster a positive framework for the discussion so students are proud to talk about meeting their goals instead of comparing scores to others.

3. Fitness testing is a great indicator for baseline and present level physical fitness. Fitness testing is an excellent tool to show students their own growth and improvements! Yes, it is certainly not our only form of feedback, as we should be providing formative and summative assessments throughout each skill we teach, but it is a useful tool for showing students how far they've come. We are also providing realistic feedback on how they can improve further to improve their overall health and wellness.

4. Goal Setting Using EOY Fitness Scores. We should ensure to keep track of students physical fitness score data throughout the year, but especially the baseline testing at the beginning of the year and the EOY scores we record around this time. I find it easiest to do this with traditional pen and paper before importing scores into a Microsoft Excel or Google Slides worksheet. I then take the pre and post test scores and write them on a piece of paper provided to the student. We take a health day to set comprehensive goals for each test area, as well as three sub-goals for each, in order to improve present levels of physical fitness. This emphasizes the important of our testing and how it can benefit students in and out of our classrooms. If you are looking for a resource to help facilitate this goal setting process, you can check out my Fitness Goal Setting Lesson here.

     Ultimately, we are responsible for how our students respond to fitness testing. We control the environment and it is our responsibility to make sure students feel safe, physically, mentally, and socially. We can perform fitness testing without catering to athletes and ensuring students of all abilities feel welcome and supported.

Good luck as we enter the home stretch to the end of the year!

An Open Letter to Tessa Embry

A recent post about an eighth grade girls response to a health quiz question about BMI has gone viral. Buzzfeed picked up the story and posted their own article and there are some things I'd like to say as a physical educator.

Dear Tessa,

     I'm so sorry your physical educators failed to fully explain the purpose and flaws behind BMI when teaching you. It hurts me deeply to know the environment you are in is making you feel uncomfortable or judged. I am a physical educator who teaches middle school students like yourself in Virginia and I, like your PE teacher, teach my students about BMI. I encourage you, and anyone else reading, to hang with me through this letter... I have a lot to say.

     When I teach my students about BMI, we talk about how it takes your weight to height ratio, places it on a correlated chart, and then slaps a category title on you. We talk about how BMI works for many individuals when it comes to accuracy, but we also go over that it is not the best, nor most accurate indicator for all individuals and body types. We teach BMI in health because it is easy to use and does apply to many people. It is also free, requires no equipment, and people from all walks of life have access to it. The key point I always articulate to my students is that individuals who have larger muscle mass are going to be labeled inaccurately. We talk about how a pound of muscle takes up 75% less space than a pound of fat in the body, we discuss how that variable is not included in the calculation, and we emphasize that BMI does not in fact define them.

     Now, in middle school (which I've already told you I teach), none of my students are muscularly developed professional athletes. Most are experiencing puberty and are just beginning to show muscular growth, but not to the dramatic extent of a fully mature adult, like a professional football player or marathon runner. Because of this, BMI is typically accurate for middle school students (there are ALWAYS exceptions to this rule and I make sure to explain that as I mentioned above). It is important to recognize when the scale is inaccurate for you, but that doesn't mean the entire topic isn't worth teaching or learning about. 

     In fact, in addition to BMI, I also educate my students about skin calibrators, bod pods, digital hand calibrators, and other forms of measurement that more accurately measure body fat percentage than BMI. Sadly, most school districts don't have funding to acquire most of these devices in public schools. It is critically important for us as health and physical educators to ensure we pass on skills to our students that allow them to be happy and healthy. We discuss nutrition, various body systems, health and skill related fitness, among many other important topics that include BMI.

     It truly saddens me to see how "old PE" still impacts the lives of students. There is a revolution in our industry, "new PE," that recognizes these bad influences and makes every effort to educate efficiently to build healthy children and adults, both mentally and physically. I sincerely hope that one negative experience will not impact you and your opinion on health and sport for the remainder of your life. 

Sincerely,

The Sassy PE Teacher

The Balancing Act

It sure has been a while since my last post! Life has become so busy that blogging has been put on the back burner for quite some time. I had hoped spring break would allow me to become more active again, but sadly I was just as busy catching up on things that had fallen by the wayside during school.

Which leads me to a puzzling questions, how do all the other bloggers balance their lives? I'm young, with no kids or husband, and I barely find time to breathe, let alone blog! I would love to contribute more to the community, but I find it so stressful. I've thought of creating a day each week dedicated to maintaining my blog, but even that seems impossible some weeks.

To give some background, I teach middle school health and physical education, I coach the girls soccer team for my school, and I've started my summer job early as the program director for a YMCA camp! Teaching is obviously my priority, coaching adds another 7-9 hours a week, and then my camp job fills up another 8 hours! I feel like I'm about to pull my hair out and it's only the first day back in school!

Despite all this, a wise man once told me to always come with a solution so here it is. I will dedicate time to blog on Monday's. My week will just be starting, all of my lessons will be planned, and I'll have the weekend to determine a topic. I really want to be successful at this blogging thing!

Until next week,
xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher

What They Told Me as a New Seller

MILESTONE ANNOUNCEMENT: For the first time since opening my store in December, I had my first back to back sales day! That's right, my Valentine's Day Fitness Bingo sold yesterday and today! My store has officially sold five items in a little over a month. Big day!

As exciting as my personal story is, I really wanted to share something that I know a lot of bloggers write about, which is how to get started on TpT. There are countless blogs, forum posts, and YouTube videos jam packed with advice, but the ocean of information is so vast, I honestly feel like many people just glance over it and don't take it seriously. I was not that type of person and listened to everything they said...

1. GET ON THE FORUMS. If I could only give a new seller like me one piece of advice, this would be it! The forums are PACKED with information, advice, community support, and positivity. Everything you ever need to know is in the forums and if you can't find what you need, you can ask in your own forum and other sellers will flock to help you!
2. GO PREMIUM ASAP. I kept waiting to make a sale that never came and ignored everyone telling me to go premium from the beginning. I didn't want to "waste" $69.99 on something I didn't even know would be successful. I ended up going premium and TWO DAYS LATER made my first sale! The product was $5.00 and I kept $4.45. If I had remained a basic seller, I would have made HALF!!! I've now made five sales, which may not seem like a lot, but of the $27.00 in products I've sold, I've been able to keep $22.95 as opposed to $13.50. Overtime, that missed income would really add up. Believe in yourself, believe in your store, and go premium. You won't regret it {and everyone telling you this is telling you the truth}!
3. DESIGN YOUR COVER PAGES. Include your store logo so buyers can recognize your products in searches. Make them bright and colorful. Include picture examples of your product. Make them consistent.
4. INVEST IN QUALITY CLIP ART. It is worth it. Clip art will also become your new obsession... As will fonts. Remember to be practical and buy what you need and wish list others you may want so you don't blow a ton of money {I'm speaking from experience here folks, this current paycheck is tight due to overspending on clip art and fonts}.
5. PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS. Make them short and simple, but ensure there is enough information so your buyers know exactly what they are getting. Include what is contained in the item, how you've used it, each of the components, and...
6. PRODUCT LINKING. In your descriptions, link to other products within your store so buyers keep shopping. I have started to link to entire product categories as opposed to a single product in order to expose buyers to more of my store! Remember to use the <a href= "" > TEXT< /a> code {minus the spaces} so your links are clean and easy to use.

Sadly, it is late and I still have to finish some lessons for tomorrow since my classes moved through material faster than anticipated! The joys of having dedicated children. I hope to come back and add pictures/examples tomorrow.

Until next time,

xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher