A Culmination to our Athletics Unit

The final week (week 6) of our Athletics unit culminated with the annual Sports Day held for grades K-5 today at our field where we had 27 stations set up for the students to rotate through depending on grade level. Kindergarten/Gr 1 rotated through 9 stations of throwing, jumping, and running and the grade 2-5 girls rotated through 9 stations as did the boys from grade 2-5. 

During the past 6 weeks, we have had our students work on drills aimed at improving speed and endurance. As well, they also participated in numerous activities and games with the goal being to improve their skills related to jumping and throwing. We tried our best to create opportunities that allowed the students to inquire into the best ways to throw and jump for distance. Throughout the unit we stressed the importance of trying to achieve personal best results in all of the events that they participated in. Essentially, the most important thing was to improve upon their own results and worry less about how the others were doing.  Naturally kids are competitive and want to beat their peers, but I think that we did well in helping them realize that the most important thing was to improve.

All results today were record on a small card pinned to their shirt. Next week as a final task, grades 2-5 will analyze their results by comparing Sports day results to the their results from earlier in the unit. Many of the students did indeed beat their personal best results from earlier in the unit.

As a final reflection, we will have a few of the classes use their results to create graphs in maths using the data collected from each week of the unit in order to determine which events they made the biggest improvements. Maths integration and Athletics go very well together. Pictures, examples of assessment, final reflections, and examples of graphs will be posted next week. Come back and visit this blog to check it out.