This past week I subbed in the same 3rd grade class all week. I love week long assignments because I can teach something from beginning to end and see the results of my teaching efforts.
On Monday we were supposed to go out for PE but it was 95 degrees so we couldn't go out. I had to come up with something for those 50 minutes so I decided to have the kids come up with their own PE games. I knew the rest of the week was going to be much cooler, so I knew I had time to play the games they came up with.
I had the student get into groups of 3 to 4, groups of their own choosing.
The groups needed to talk about and agree upon what they were going to do, here are the requirements they needed to follow:
- Name of the game - could be a variation of an existing game or a completely made up game.
- Number of players - would it be teams, groups or individual?
- The play area or boundaries - they needed to think of our playground area and decide where their game was going to be played.
- Materials Needed - their game could only be played with whatever balls or PE equipment we had available to us in the classroom.
- Rules: They needed to come up with all the rules for the game.
The rules were much harder for them to write out. They had a hard time thinking through the whole game and what rules needed to be stated. As the students worked on this I walked around asking questions like:
What do they do if they are tagged - sit, go out, become one of the taggers, etc.?
Is there a free space? What does that mean? How long can they be free?
How is the winner determined?
How does the game restart?
These questions helped guide them in their rule writing.
Throughout the week I picked 2 games a day to play. I broke the class into 2 groups and 1/2 way through switched the kids so they got a chance to play each game.
I only had to intervene a few times when the game managers lost control of their players. Each day we ended with a debriefing on what worked and what didn't. How game managers needed to maintain control and how players needed to be more respectful and cooperative. Overall, it was very successful and ALL the kids had a great time! They loved all the different games and struggled with, but liked being the game managers.
Here are a few pictures of the games being played with their papers and drawings. I just love the names they came up with for the games.
I created a PE Challenge worksheet if you would like to try this out with your class, I highly recommend it!!
You can pick this up from either one of my stores - for FREE!
Happy Playing!
This review actually has a free true false comprehension game attached.
Happy planning!
