The Common Core standards were introduced to schools throughout the nation in 2010 and have quickly been adopted by 45 states. Designed as a robust, nationwide set of school standards, the Common Core program builds off the state standards already in place. The standards prepare students for college and the workforce by providing them with various skills that enforce writing, thinking critically, and solving real-world problems. 

The program focuses primarily on math and English language arts, which extend to all school subjects, including physical education. Let’s take a look at how you can integrate Common Core standards in your P.E. class.

Reading

A prominent focus in the Common Core standards is developing verbal and reading skills. Fortunately, you’ve been doing this the entire time without even knowing it. Simply providing verbal cues and instructions each day is a good starting point, but you can push it further with these simple ideas:

• Station cards: During an activity that involves moving between several different stations, create station cards that offer in-depth written instructions for what to do next for critical thinking/comprehension practice.
• Read-alouds: Also known as shared reading, read-alouds give students a chance to hear fluent reading. Provide hand-outs and read out loud while your students follow along. They can then keep the hand-outs to peruse later or to reinforce your verbal instructions.
• Bulletin boards: Provide a bulletin board that gives your students instructions, tasks that must be accomplished, or provides a lesson that they must apply during class. Create a PE word wall that displays important vocabulary—movement words, health terms, names of muscle groups—that will be used throughout the day’s lesson.
• Supplemental texts: Post or hand out supplemental materials about the sport or skill you’re currently covering. For instance, if you are on your baseball unit, post a short history of baseball, the basic rules, fun facts, and profiles of athletes.

Writing

Proficient writing has become one of the most important skills in the modern day. Some ways you can integrate writing into your P.E. curriculum:

• Setting goals: Have students write down their goals before an activity or at the start of the week. At the end of the activity or the week, have kids provide a post-assessment of what they accomplished and what they could have done better.
• Health and fitness journals: An extension of the above, you can have each student compile an in-depth journal that records their fitness goals for the entire year and includes a daily breakdown of the foods they ate and the physical activities they performed.
• Create a new game: Split kids into groups and have them write out the rules and directions for a new game. They can then provide a quick demonstration of the new game, and you can choose from the best to play during the next class period.
• Educational brochures: Kids can create informational brochures on various subjects, like the importance of physical activity, nutrition, or how to maintain a healthy heart. You can then make copies and distribute them or post them on your bulletin board.
• Home fitness projects: These projects extend the lessons kids learn in class to their lives at home. Have them write out ideas for living healthy outside of school.
• Create a class website or blog: Put kids in charge of certain elements of the blog or website and encourage students to contribute to the blog by writing short posts and comments. This is also a great way to build students’ technological proficiency.

Math

Math comprises a whole range of skills that go far beyond solving equations on a chalkboard.

• Graphs: Students should create graphs and charts that show their results for a given activity. For example, when students run timed laps, you can have them chart out their times and see their progress over the course of a month.
• Skip counting: Normally, when your students warm up or do stretches, they count by ones. Switch things up by having kids skip count progressively. For example, they can do ten jumping jacks counting by ones (1, 2, 3, 4…), then do toe touches for ten seconds but counting by twos (2, 4, 6, 8…). This is a great way to combine physical activity with multiples.
• Pedometers: Pedometers can be used for all kinds of fun math-related activities. Kids can wear pedometers during class to see how many steps they’ve taken and then challenge themselves to take more steps during the next class. They can add the numbers together to see how many total steps they took.

While the mere mention of standards can bring on the snores, there are tons of ways to integrate the Common Core standards into your physical education curriculum. Check out this webinar recording for more ideas for different grade levels. Get creative and have fun!

Music is a timeless element that has been around since humans first created rhythms from the beating of sticks and stones. It is powerful, drawing deep emotions and memories buried in the thick of things, but most of all, music is a stimulant for the mind, body, and soul. Once the music starts, you don’t even realize that your body is moving and reacting to the melody and beat.

Physical education teachers have implemented music and dance into their curricula in a number of creative, fun ways to get kids moving and active. Let’s take a look at a few benefits of music and dance in P.E. class.

1. Dance comes in numerous styles/genres.

When you teach your kids to play basketball, there’s only one way to play. Same goes for football, soccer, and almost any other sport or activity. Dance comes in countless genres and styles, from ballroom to modern and beyond. With such a variegated collection of genres, it’s easy for each student to find something he or she enjoys, whether it’s stomp, ballet, waltz, hip-hop, or tap.

Even better, you can easily combine styles. Teach your kids several genres and, at the end, have groups put together unique routines that combine elements from all the dances they have learned. Consider recording the routines and using them to promote dance and activity to other kids. This not only gives them that extra bit of motivation but gives them an end result to strive for and look forward to.

2. Music motivates movement.

Music naturally stimulates parts of the brain responsible for unconscious movement, which explains the head bobbing, shoulder shrugging, and toe tapping that you don’t even think about when you hear your favorite tune on the radio. Younger students should have no problem getting down on the dance floor, but even the most self-conscious of teens should have no problem moving with the groove. Even without formal instruction on any specific dance style, you should notice a distinct change in the mood and atmosphere that encourages students to continue moving.

This comes in handy when you feel that students are straying off task. Just crank up the tunes to get their attention back to the activity at hand. For an even greater motivator, you can have the kids recommend songs—school appropriate, of course.

3. Music is a great timer.

Music is a great way to keep time when you don’t have a clock. As suggested in this trainer tip video, when students are using weight machines, you can create minute-long chunks of music followed by fifteen to twenty seconds of silence to give students a chance to reset the equipment and move to the next station, doing away with clocks, alarms, or a stopwatch and whistle. You can apply the same idea to running laps, warming up, or stretching.

4. Music enhances performance.

Music naturally blocks the voice in your head that tells you to quit when you get tired. This dissociation effect has been shown to reduce perceived effort and increase endurance, essentially tricking people into performing intense exercises for longer periods of time.

As mentioned above, music has a positive affect on mood. Music makes students happier by presenting a more welcoming, positive atmosphere that motivates students to push themselves and work harder.

5. Dance is a lifetime sport.

The great thing about dance, as noted in this trainer tip video, is that it is a lifetime sport. It’s a timeless activity that is perfect for all age groups, from kindergarteners to octogenarians. It works out your coordination, rhythm, flexibility, and various muscle groups throughout the body. Unlike contact sports and many other activities, dancing is low impact if you do it right, so it’s easy on the joints. It’s also easy to vary the difficulty or intensity of any dance to fit students’ skill levels and preferences.

Even if students don’t pursue a career in dance, it’s something that carries over throughout various social functions—weddings, proms, nights on the town—so it doesn’t hurt to learn a few basic dance steps.
Dance and music are deeply ingrained in society. Find some fun, creative ways to incorporate both into your PE classes.

Need some ideas for engaging and enjoyable activities? Here we’ve listed three great middle school lesson plans to try this month.  SPARK Middle School Physical Education (MS PE) was designed to be more inclusive, active, and fun than traditional PE classes. Aligned with NASPE National Standards, each one of these lessons are easy to learn, and easy to teach. Enjoy!

2-Minute Drill

This classic football activity is a good one to start with since so many students are familiar with the game already. Here’s the setup:

• Form groups of three students and one football.
  • Pick one quarterback, one center, and one receiver.
• Use your feet to make a 10-step by 15-step grid with cones at the corners.

The point here is to practice snapping the ball to the quarterback, running a passing play, and scoring a touchdown. Students should be fast and score as many as they can in two minutes. Here are the rules:

• Students line up on any side of their grid: center in snapping position, quarterback behind and receiver to the side.
• QB yells “Hike!”, the center snaps the ball and the receiver runs out for the catch.
• A touchdown is scored when the ball is caught beyond the opposite gridline.
• If a touchdown, the QB and center run to the receiver and start over from the new goal line. If no touchdown is scored, the receiver runs back to the QB and center to try again.

This activity focuses on specific sports skills, aerobic capacity, cooperation, accepting challenges, and teamwork. You can increase or decrease the size of the grid to accommodate the ability of your students. As students improve, add another receiver and defender to the mix!

Click Here to download the complete lesson plan.

Daytona 2000

Now here’s one that will get their motors running! (As long as their motors are their feet, of course.) The object here is for a team of two to accumulate 2,000 steps while running laps around a course one minute at a time. Here’s how to set it up:

• Designate two elliptical courses with cones, one inside the other. The outer path should be 25 by 50 steps, and the inner course 20 by 45 steps.
• Give each student a pedometer (or one to each team if there are not enough).
• Play music for one minute at a time to designate when partners switch.

You only need four cones for each track; that way you can have your students count how many cones they pass before it’s time to switch. Here’s how the game works:

• One partner begins on the outer track, jogging at a continuous pace for one minute. The other partner walks on the interior track in the opposite direction.
• At the one-minute mark (designated by your music), the partners continue around their track until they meet, they high five, and then switch.
• 2,000 steps is the goal, but can your students do more?
• Add difficulty by having students dribble a soccer ball or basketball while they jog!

The features of this fast-paced activity include aerobic capacity, interval training, and accepting challenges. Students even learn to motivate each other!

Click Here to download the complete lesson plan.

Sepak Takraw

If the name of this game sounds foreign to you, that’s because it is! Sepak is Malay for “kick,” and takraw is Thai for “woven ball.” The object is for students to hit the ball over a net using only their feet and legs. It’s very similar to volleyball, only no hands are allowed. Set it up like this:

• Six students are assigned to a grid that is 8 by 8 paces in the area.
• Create two teams of three, with a net between the teams made of jump rope and cones.
• Teams of three form triangles in their square, with one person at the net and two in the back row.

Yes, students can let the ball hit the ground, but only once between passes. Students must use their feet to hit the ball to the other side of the net in three or fewer passes. Here are some more rules:

• Only the serving team can score. Teams serve by having one player lob the ball to the center player, who kicks it over the net to the other team.
• The serving team earns a point when the defending team does one of these things:
  • Kicks the ball out of bounds
  • Takes more than 3 hits to return the ball
  • Touches the ball with a hand or arm
  • Traps or catches ball with feet or body
  • Lets the ball bounce more than once between kicks
• If the serving team scores, they continue serving. If the defending team wins the volley, no teams score points.
  • When the defending team scores, they get to serve.
  • The players on both teams rotate.
• Don’t forget to encourage communication between teammates! If your classroom is highly skilled, or you want more players per team, expand the court and put more students in play.

This difficult but rewarding activity promotes learning transferable foot skills and game strategy, increases aerobic capacity, and teaches cooperation and appreciation of diversity.

Click Here to download the complete lesson plan.

Now that you’re equipped with three more lesson plans, it’s time to get out and play!