Physical education during pandemic

As we realized we will have to start the new school year in an online learning setting during the 2020 summer break, worry and questions about how to teach PE effectively online emerged for the ISD physical education and health teacher team.

Having completed the mid-year reports, we can be assured that the extraordinary PE team created fantastic ideas, proposals, and modifications to our Physical Education program to enable high-quality teaching and learning while we have been online. Congratulations have to go to our students for their amazing work in our PE lessons; it is remarkable what they have achieved so far.

Primary PE has covered work on health-related fitness and dance. Currently, they are working on different games across all grade levels. It has been awesome to see the engagement and creativity shown by our students and their teachers to make each lesson easy to follow and enjoyable. Ms. Mariana, Coach Moore, and Mr. Ali are extremely pleased overall with the learning happening during our online learning phase. The use of Seesaw as the main platform of communication and students' work has been proven to be very effective. In each lesson, students have multiple opportunities to move, be physically active, regardless if we have planned fitness sessions, dances, or game creations. 

Secondary PHE has covered content and assessment tasks on health-related fitness and aesthetics. Currently, some grade levels are working on completing tasks on interpersonal skills and others on skills development. Coach Cory and Mr. Dan are impressed with the quality of work submitted on Managebac by students. They have embraced the assignments and projects for each unit with a positive attitude and have truly used their creativity while at home to complete their work for each formative and summative task. We have managed to keep all the units as authentic as possible; only a few tasks needed minor modifications to be adapted to the online learning environment. Parallel with managing to complete our Criteria based assessment tasks, and we are using different types of workouts and physical activities to keep ourselves in good health. Our recent mid-year reports gave us the confidence that significant learning is occurring, and students are doing very well academically.

While many might be anxious about moving back to learning on campus, please be assured that our PE Team, including teachers and support staff, is doing everything possible to keep everyone safe. We are focusing on planning activities that are predominantly outdoors, limiting or excluding physical contact, and following strict protocols to wipe clean with disinfectant all equipment after every use. ISD PHE team wishes everyone to be well and stay healthy.

The author is Head of K-12 Physical Education Department of ISD