Connection to Community Unit: Blog Post #3

Unpacking the Challenges Grade 5 Students Face in Being Physical Active? 

As we dive a little deeper into our 'Connections To Community'  unit,  it is very important to examine  the challenges that students face in taking action to be physically active at recess, after school, and on weekends.   It is worth the time and energy to begin to unpack these challenges with the students and co-construct solutions that may help them  take more action on being physically active outside of their regularly scheduled PE time. 

To set the tone for this unit, we used a powerful provocation that I wrote about in  blog post #2.   It was an excellent provocation that got the students tuned in to the big ideas of 'taking action' and 'identifying challenges'.   

In taking it one step further, we revisited the provocation from  the first class. We shared our big takeaways and what resonated the most in regards to the Julius Yego Story.   This took a couple of minutes, then I had the students think about their own lives and identify challenges that they faced that were similar to Julius Yego. Using yellow  sticky circles, the students identified which challenges that  they had in common with Julius. They wrote their name on the yellow circles as well, so I can follow up individually with them (see photo below). 

As a quick follow up, I had the students then write down other challenges that they face in taking action to be physically active on a separate visual using sticky notes. It was important to  provide the opportunity for them to share as many challenges  as they could think of, so that we could begin to think about solutions. 

In the visual below, you can see what this visual looked like. 

When class was over, I went through their responses and created a visual that would be used to begin the unpacking process in regards to brainstorming potential solutions to the challenges that the students face. We will co-construct these solutions across the grade level and get input from different teachers and students across the school.   In identifying challenges  so early in the unit and beginning to unpack potential solutions, we are in a great position to get the students  to hopefully take more action in being physically active when outside of the regularly scheduled PE classes.  Please see visual below that  includes their very honest answers. 

Now that we have identified  a number of different challenges that the students face in taking action to be physically active, it is a great time to bring in the  'Solutions Grid'   strategy that I've used in the past to brainstorm and document  solutions to different problems that students face.   Over the next couple of weeks, we will look at each challenge and record as many solutions as we can.  My hope is that by the midway point in this unit,  when taking action becomes critically important, the students will have a number of different strategies that they could  use to overcome the challenges that they have identified as holding them back from taking action to be more physically active in their lives outside of PE time. 

Please see the 'Solutions Grid' below.  As this grid fills up with ideas, I will do another blog post to share our learning. How might you use the solutions grid in your program or your classes?  Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading.