Who We Are – Grade 2, 2018

Last year we began the school year with the whole of the primary section undertaking the same unit at the same time. This helped in PE to set the scene for the beginning of the year, explore attitudes and learner profiles that we might need throughout the year and collaborate to create our PE essential agreements in every year level.

To achieve this, I revisited the PYP PSPE Scope & Sequence to identify the conceptual understandings and learning outcomes for every class which helped me to brainstorm learning engagements for this unit. Below are some videos that have been recorded to highlight the activities we have engaged in. I have also added our unit of inquiry details and some descriptions of what I was aiming to achieve with each year level.

In this unit, I wanted focus in on the risk-taking part of the unit details and present the students with activities where they have to take risks in order to achieve their goal. With this in mind, a number of team-building type of activities came to mind which initially used before brainstorming some of my own ideas.

To begin, I had the students undertake the paper-toss risk game, where students earn points for throwing a paper ball in to a basket. The further away they are the more points they earn however, they take a greater risk if they do move further back.

In another session I wanted to get the students more active and was able to brainstorm a couple of activities that got the students moving and taking risks. In the first challenge, teams had to advance up a series of cones by choosing their preferred path. They could either perform 5 jumping jacks to move forward 1 space, roll a dice and hope for an odd number to move forward 2 space or roll a 6 to move forward 3 spaces.

In the second challenge, students had to complete a stepping stones running course but had to choose between an outside (longer) course where it was safer as the stepping stones were closer together or, an inside circuit which was shorter but carried greater risk as the stepping stones were further apart. If a student fell off a stepping stone, they had to begin again and we were very strict with our judgement so that students really had to weigh up the amount of risk they wanted to take.

Following this session (with the next class) I actually changed the dice rolling game to add a penalty for rolling a dice. So we had 5 jumping jacks = 1 space, roll and odd number = move back one space and roll a 6 = move forward 3 spaces. This was better in the