Story-Telling as a Provocation

Using stories as a provocation to better engage young learners in PE

Photo credit: Joan Almon from Adventure: The Value of Risk in Children's Play

Creating meaningful and relevant movement opportunities for our young students is directly dependent on our ability to spark curiosity, wonder, imagination, and joy in their learning on a daily basis. 

Inspiring movement and physical activity can be purposefully planned for through the use of specific provocations that help to capture our young learner’s imaginations as early as possible in the units that we teach.

I’m lucky to  work very closely with Zack Smith, who is a fantastic early year’s physical education teacher in the kindergarten section of The KAUST School here in Saudi Arabia. Zack and I have closely collaborated over the past three years in regards to developing the most meaningful PE experiences possible for our young learners. Zack has many great ideas and deep insight into the developmental needs of kindergarten students which helps to springboard some really good discussions around unit design in PE. The work that Zack and I are doing is an attempt to  better understand how the Meaningful PE framework  can be applied to 3-year olds.   The big  questions that we have  are:

How can we create meaningful movement experiences for  our youngest learners? 
How  can we make their learning in PE relevant to who they are? 
How can we help them connect with their classmates in order to develop the social skills of working together? 
How can we ensure they are challenged in order to build their motor competence? 
How can we  infuse joy and delight every step of the way in their learning journey in physical education? 

Over the past few months, Zack and I have been planning more specifically in relation to how he might engage his students on a much deeper level in order to not only develop their motor competence, but to also ensure that all learning is relevant and accessible to them in a way that brings delight and joy.

At the beginning of the school year, Zack created his own professional inquiry that explored how he could better use verbal and symbolic language with his students in order to better engage them in their learning and to create more agency. Through close observation and data collection in Zack’s PE classes, I was able to share some important data with him that led to us discussing his use of voice and visuals in his teaching.

Although Zack has always used his voice and visuals in ways to capture his students’ attention, we created a plan that would take this to what we felt was the next level.

Story-Telling as a Provocation
Zack has always told stories to his young learners in the past, but what we decided to do differently was to specifically create stories that were more purposefully structured in ways that inspire an imaginative journey that embeds movement and physical activity as part of the storyline.

Planning these stories from scratch takes an open-mind, some deeply creative thinking, and carefully planning the types of visuals to be used in the story. Each lesson is essentially a short chapter with each chapter building in complexity in order to set up different challenges that the students will need to explore and take part in.

As Zack’s pedagogical/instructional coach, one of my roles is to help him to create teaching resources based on our planning discussions. Our goal has always been to deepen levels of engagement which can often be measured through further observations. As Zack uses the resources as part of his teaching, my job is to then observe the students to see whether or not they are more engaged in the lesson. This can easily be done by literally counting the number of times Zack has to re-direct his students to get them back on track. I can also observe his students as Zack tells the stories to see how closely they are paying attention.

Through the use of voice and specific visuals in his story-telling, we have found that the students have definitely been paying more attention. We have also found that the number of re-directs on Zack’s part has gone down considerably as the students are really engaged in his lessons. This provides us with valuable data to show that the use of story-telling with visuals has helped to not only keep students on track with their learning, but to better engage them in the lessons.
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I’d like to share the story we created so far in Zack’s current unit and what we are hoping to accomplish through this story.

STRIKE FORCE HEROES
Zack is currently doing a unit that focuses the students on developing striking skills using their hand and other striking implements such as soft paddles, rackets, bats and also their feet. These manipulative skills help children to strengthen the muscles in their hands, develop eye-everything coordination, increase physical control, and explore cognitive concepts like cause and effect.

Have a look below to see the visuals that we are using in Zack’s Strike Force Heroes story and a summary of each part of the story so far.   The goal is to get the kids engaged in movement through the  themes of the story.  Each student can be a part of the Strike Force team in order to defeat the evil villain. Exciting stuff! 

Lesson #1

Visual #1: The Strike Force Heroes come from another world to find a team of heroes to join them

Visual #2: They need a team of Strike Force Heroes to join them!!

Visual #3: Introduction of the evil villain! He gains power by collecting targets. He uses these target on his villain suit

Visual #5: Zack introduces first challenge which is that the new superhero force team has to learn to grip their racket properly

Visual #4: Students introduced to idea that the villain loses power when his targets are struck or touched.

Visual #6: The first superhero challenge is use the soft paddle to explore and try to find villain targets to touch. Kids carry beanbags on top of soft paddle. As they go through the obstacle course and find targets, they touch the target with the paddle.

Lesson #2

Visual #7: Re-introduce the Strike Force Hero leaders.

Visual #8: Re-introduce the villain. This bad guy is gets his power by taking targets.

Visual #10: Introduce the journey. The students must embark on a journey to find targets to touch and strike with a ball. When they do this, the villain loses his power.

Visual #12: Strike Force members must also take the boat to safe land.

Visual #13: They must fuel up by jumping up and down on trampoline to get their own fuel back to continue their journey.

Visual #15: Students are shown the map of the journey they are about to embark on. Get ready Strike Force team!!!

Visual #7: Share with the students that the Strike Force team is a top secret mission

Visual #9: Re-introduce the idea that when the student touch a target or strike a target with a ball, the bad guy loses power.

Visual #11: Crossing the pond. They must cross the pond. In the pond has, of course, scary creatures.

Visual #12: They must climb up the ladder and down the other side to try to find more targets to touch or strike with a ball.

Visual #14: Strike Force team members must remember that they have to use their tools correctly, with the proper grip. Review grip with students at this point.

Visual #16: Remind students what they are looking for.....the villain's targets. By touching them with the paddle or striking them with a ball, the villain loses his power and strength.

Reflections after the first two lessons? 

Both  Zack and I have noticed full engagement, less need for re-directing students, and some really happy and excited kids. We have noticed that they were actually making efforts to touch the targets  with the paddle as they navigated their way through the obstacle course.   We also noticed less behavior problems as the students  had options. They didn't have to go through the course exactly as  laid out in the story visual (#15). They could drop in and out of different areas of the  obstacle course journey in order to tap into their curiosity more.   

Zack and I met (today) at the end of the day to pre-plan next week's chapter.  There  are some adjustments that we will make to re-emphasize certain parts of the story in order to draw out   the learning intentions that we have for this unit.   Planning for meaningful experiences in  physical education with young children takes  careful planning that goes well beyond just letting them run around for 30 minutes with no specific  purpose.  It is easy to think that  3 -year olds just need to play and explore with no purpose. Although this is true at times, Zack and I are carefully planning how they play and explore in order to create meaningful movement experiences that connect them with their classmates, challenge them to  learn new ways to move their bodies, and to  use their imagination in ways that bring them joy and delight. 

Looking forward to sharing another blog post showing the progression of learning. In the meantime, check out the photos of the students   working hard in their role as Strike Force  Heroes. Thanks for reading.