A Dynamic Approach to Teaching Games in Elementary P.E.

Authors: S. Doolittle & K. Girard

Summary by Byron Ellingson

Issue:

The authors of this article were trying to make you picture a situation of an elementary class with a range of lower to higher skilled students, where

teaching a skilled sport may be difficult and discouraging to one, and boring and slow to the advanced child.

Reasoning:

The authors share the same strategies and concepts that we as a class are learning on how to cope with this discouraging situation. They explain the

importance of teaching the tactical concepts of the sport by playing modified games that focus on the basic principles of the games so the kids can

understand why they are learning a certain skill. Just teaching motor skills(i.e. drills) related to a game and then playing an adult game, where

generally the elite athletes in the class take control and end up being the only ones participating, is not an enjoyable experience for the whole class.

This article focuses on invasion games where the classes are broken down into units. Depending how long the kids pick up on each unit, will depict how

many classes you will need to teach each unit. The first unit teaches the basic fundamentals of scoring and preventing a goal. This was illustrated by

one person tossing a bean bag into a hoola hoop and the other person preventing a goal. The importance of the kids to come up with their own

strategical tactics of scoring and defending , and then going over them as a group, reinforces what they have just learnt themselves. It also gets the

lower skilled students to understand basic concept of the game and gives them a chance to have success. The units slowly increase in complexity which will

give additional strategies for the students to learn.

Assumptions:

The author assumes that the higher skilled students will participate in the basic unit where the skill level is minimal. They didn't emphasize the

importance of the teacher to be enthusiastic and energetic while presenting the task. I believe as a teacher you almost have to sell to the students the

importance of how the basic concepts that one achieves, relates to other invasion games.

Significant Information:

This article gives a detailed four-game progression of strategy play for invasion games, using hoola hoops and bean bags. It provides problems and

solutions for each stage of progression.

Conclusion:

This article shows the transition of learning one skill or tactic from one sport to a range of many other invasion games. This enables the teacher

not to teach the same basic tactics over and over for similar games.  This will save time and enable the students to build an understanding of how the

concepts of activities relate to one another.