Grade 2 PE Integration: Rights and Responsibilities Unit of Inquiry

The Rights and Responsibilities grade 2 unit of inquiry is now in the third week and the PE integration is going quite well helping to lend support to the classroom teachers. Through collaboration with the grade 2 teaching team, it was decided for the first few weeks that I would look, in particular, at what the student's responsibilities are in PE in general, but more specifically, what their responsibilities are in the games and activities. 

As we are doing an adventure challenge unit in PE, the students are required to work on teams at solving complex tasks. This type of unit is excellent for addressing both individual and group responsibilities and can generate a lot of very good discussion regarding prosocial behavior. 

The three games that we played in today's class were: 
A) Build and Unbuild a Human Bridge
In this game the students have to lie on the floor, one at a time, and extend their legs and arms as much as possible as a link in an imaginary human bridge which must span the width of an imaginary river. Once a students lies down and extends their arms and legs, the next students runs from the side of river to add to the bridge, then the next one goes etc. Once they make their imaginary bridge, they must all gather on the opposite side of the river and build the bridge back. The game ends when the team completes the task. They must sit in a circular formation with their arms around one another to show that they have completed the task. 




B) Build and Unbuild a Bridge of Hula Hoops
Same idea as the game described above. However, they must use hula hoops to construct the bridge and stay inside the hula hoops as they cross the river. Once all of the students make it to the opposite side of the imaginary river, they disembark on dry land then make their way back across the river to the original side. They must unbuild the bridge in the process, organize the hoops in an orderly fashion, then form a circle again. 

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C) Build a Bridge to Capture the Gold
This game is the same as the hula hoop game described above, however, once they cross the river, the must collect pieces of gold (bean bags) that are scattered about on the far side of the gym and return them back over the river to their home. They can only carry with them one piece of gold at a time. This is important as it forces them to think about how best to get the bean bag back. In the first part of this game the students each grab a bean bag and run like crazy chickens back and forth over the bridge. This invariably causes traffic jams on their own bridge which slows down the entire team. It isn't long before they realize that the more efficient way to get the gold back is to form a line and pass the bean bags along the line over the bridge and back to their home. They must once again finish off by unbuilding the bridge, organizing the hoops, place all of the gold inside of the hoops, and form a circle with arms around one another. The team with the most gold is victorious. Any student who steps out of the hoop and into the river costs their team three bean bags. These 3 bean bags are given to the other team. 

The cones designate the far side of the river.

Formative Assessment
To assess the students understanding of what they felt their responsibilities were in this game and to identify what they need to improve, I had them complete the assessment sheet that you see below. I included examples of some of their work.