Involving Students in Assessment Design in PE

Whenever possible I try to involve students in the process of assessment design in PE as it offers them opportunities to not only take ownership over their own learning but to also look in-depth at a task and breakdown essential requirements related to success. What I mean by this is that they must ask themselves this critical question-- “What is needed in order to be successful in this activity?”


Assessment is all about making judgements and teaching our students to identify important factors related to success immediately sets the stage for deeper level thinking to take place. During the course of this past week, my students in grades 2 to 4 have been working on creating simple routines in our movement composition unit. Using a number of You Tube videos on different types of movement composition, I have had the students pretend to be olympic judges and to think hard about what makes an excellent routine so amazing to watch. What key elements can we pick out from these routines that can be measured? 

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Students discussing what makes for a good routine in their mother tongue (German in this case)

Two Korean students discussing which assessment criteria that they feel is important.

I had each class watch several different types of movement composition such as rhythmic gymnastics, floor routines, cirque du soleil, hip hop etc. After watching these You Tube videos, the students had discussions with their peers about what they had seen and tried to identify factors related to success. We got together as a group and the students shared their ideas which were recorded on chart paper. Some of the criteria that they came up with were balance, body control, timing, smoothness and flow, strength, teamwork, challenging moves, and beauty. Each class voted on which three criteria that they felt were most important in a routine. The three chosen criteria were then used to peer assess the movement composition routines that they had created. Ample time was given for them to work in their groups and to communicate about what they needed to do to ensure that they met the requirements of the selected criteria. 


You can see from the picture below the way that the assessment task was set up. After each group performed their short routine, I had the students give verbal feedback right away and to assess each criterion as either OK, GOOD, or SUPER. We used a color coded system as you can see in the picture. For example, if the students felt that the timing of the routine was OK, I would color that criterion in green. 

Maths Integration

I incorporated some maths into the grade 4 lessons by having each student vote on the assessment criteria (1 was OK, 2 was Good, and 3 was Super). The results were recorded on the board and we figured out the average and then used the appropriate color on the assessment chart seen in the picture. Although each of the classes had mostly similar assessment criteria there were some differences. You can see these differences in the pictures as well. 

Overall, it was an excellent method for peer assessing which was easy to organize and efficient in nature. Please see video below of one of my grade 2 movement composition routines.