Here in British Columbia we, as physical educators, strive to meet the aims and goals of the BC IRP.  We have developed a four-lesson grade 9 soccer unit with these same aims and goals in mind.  According to the IRP the aim of physical education is “to enable all students to enhance their quality of life through active living” so we planned our soccer unit to work towards this.  We did this by using a Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach. 

    As Metzler notes, “the largest single content area in most physical education programs is the teaching and learning of sport-related games” (2005) and the most common approach for teaching these games is in the following manner: teaching isolated skills and the rules of the game followed by playing the full game, which “favors students who come into the unit with previous experience and skills in the game being taught” (Metzler).  If we want more students to get more out of PE, we need to have a shift in focus.  The TGfU model is a good example of a shift in focus and we chose it for our soccer unit because being a sport that is a game, it fits well.  TGfU is a model for teaching that uses modified games, focusing on the cognitive side of things so that as students progress, they are gaining decision making skills directly applicable to the game at hand and they end up with a better understanding of the game.

Key features of our unit that will allow students of diverse abilities to gain benefits are the rules of minimum numbers of passes that we have incorporated into several of the games, as well as the progressions available to them to take on as soon as they’re ready, for example, using their hands instead of their feet to start the game and then working to using their feet as they got the idea of the game.  We have also kept team sizes fairly small so that everyone gets more touches, regardless of their ability.  We made the teams ourselves in a semi-strategic way so that no team was stacked, which allowed everyone to be continuously engaged rather than one team just always having the ball and always winning.

The unit will encourage students to pursue physical activity because it is fun, students can take ownership of some of their learning and they can come out of the unit with a higher level of skill in soccer.  It is fun because we play games like shark and endball, and everyone loves to play games.  They take ownership for some of their learning through the teacher giving them a modified game and having them play it to naturally figure out strategy and game understanding, then asking them questions about what worked and didn’t work for them, why and how, and having them answer.  They came out with a higher level of skill in soccer because they used their improved game sense to get more effective practice.  This higher level of skill gives them the confidence and feeling of success that will cause them to want to pursue further physical activity, whether it is soccer or some other form of activity.

During a teaching experience with these lessons in a grade nine PE class, we saw these three things happen first hand.