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Pirateball (with a twist)

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Pirateball is my go to filler game when we are between units and I need a day to simply get the kids moving. Every student has role to play on their team and it's okay for the less inactive students to be defenders because they are forced to move to pull the flags of the intruders. If you need to get some students more active...Limit the number of flag belts on a team. Students with belts MUST be retrievers, only students without belts may stay in the quadrant to defend. Then force them to switch who has belts each round. I also vary the objective to keep the students interested. One of the downsides to this game is the students who cheat (take more than one ball, roll their flags, etc). I do take participation points off of students grades when they do not follow the rules of the game because it's part of my daily expectation. But I also have found that a short time in the "penalty box" also helps to redirect and correct the behavior. Today, I wanted to keep rein
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P.E. Students of the Month

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How do we recognize outstanding students? I'm all about motivating students who don't normally get recognized. A few years ago I joined a committee in our school that chose students of the month for each grade level throughout the school. However, a lot of the students that were chosen were not good students in the P.E. setting and vice versa! I found that I would have students in my P.E. classes that were excellent for me but had troubles with the classroom settings. So I created P.E. Students of the Month. Each department member nominates one student from each type of P.E. class we have. We needed a good incentive also, so I reached out to our local fitness center. We recognize them with the following: -Picture and posting on a hallway bulletin board -Certificate found here: https://www.creativecertificates.com/physical-education-certificates/ -One month free membership to Water Street Fitness Center P.S. I also post this in my quarterly newsletter to parents and
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Welcome Back

Welcome to my first blog post in quite some time! I've been doing a lot of reaching outside of my comfort zone this year and have tried a lot of new things. Some big, some litte. Some worked, some didn't. But as I have stolen most of these ideas from other PE teachers, I'd like to put my experiences out there for other teachers to steal as well! First of all, I am a PE teacher at a high school of about 500 students. I mainly teach Freshmen PE, so I have every freshmen student in our building for PE class. My class sizes vary from 12-33 students. I do have a small class set of Fitness for Life textbooks to use to supplement what I am teaching throughout the year. I also have access to a large gymnasium, small gymnasium, matroom, and weightroom. Second, I am also the Student Council advisor, a wife, a mother of two, and casual runner. So, I definitely keep busy outside of normal work hours!
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Sepak Takraw (Kick Volleyball)

Sepak Takraw is a net game played mostly in countries in Southeast Asia region. It is similar to volleyball but played mostly with your feet, thus the name "kick volleyball". Players may also use any parts of their body except arms and hands (similar to soccer). I also like to compare some of the skills used to hacky sack. Here  is a good introductory video from the official website. Here is video of my students playing with some modifications. Here is a link to some officials rules with some official terminology. For PE purposes, we modify the rules and equipment quite a bit to allow for greater success. Here are some of the modifications I make: 1. Ball: While I do have the official sepak takraw balls. I have found that a very small amount of my students will master the skills needed to use it. The official balls are plastic and do travel quickly. Therefore, we use 5 1/2 inch foam, rough-skin dodgeballs.  2. Net : The first day we lower the net to pickleball
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