What is PE?

Driving question to start the new school year for my grade 1 students

We've started up the new school year here at the Nanjing International School in China. Over the summer vacation, I devoted some time to reading, reflecting, and thinking about new ideas to implement in my physical education program. I'll be blogging regularly about these ideas throughout the year and am quite excited to try them out. My ultimate goal is to increase engagement and to enhance the learning of my students in physical education. I'd like to share an activity I did with my grade 1 students yesterday. 

What is PE? 
I do not teach kindergarten PE, so all of the students I have in grade 1 this school year are new to me. As an initial starting point, I wanted to tap into their prior knowledge about what PE is, so created a visual with this driving question, "What is PE?". Short and sweet in nature. 

At the start of the class, we had a bit of a run around, then I threw the question out to them. I asked them to do a 'walk & talk' to discuss their answers to the question. With some lively music playing in the background they set off walking and talking (most of them!!) and after three minutes, I had them gather back in front of the visual to share their answers. 

The little ones never cease to amaze me with their insight. My plan is to use their answers to this driving question to help in creating essential agreements in PE. By getting the students to understand what PE is, we can then narrow the focus to what expectations are in PE. My next step will be to use the visual to have a discussion about important rules and expectations for the year, our class essential agreements. 

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Have a look at all of their wonderful answers below. The ideas that you see in the visual are a combined effort from the two grade 1 classes that I have this year. I'm looking forward to the next step in the process of creating essential agreements. I believe that including their initial voice in answering the question, "What is PE?" will help them feel more ownership in the process of creating our grade 1 essential agreements for the 2014-2015 school year. I plan on using a similar process for all of my classes from grades 1-5 and will be blogging and sharing their ideas over the next week. How do you create your essential agreements in PE? Would love you to share in the comment area below.