Boys vs Girls Part II

(pic taken from thebookwormcentral.blogspot.com)

I’ve had a bit of time to think about this since I last wrote my blog and to tell you the truth, some of the comments that were made about my post threw me off and made me question my approach to teaching, especially in regards to the groupings of boys and girls. When I posted the original post on Facebook, I had a few people saying that this approach was incorrect and that I was promoting the boy/girl divide by doing this, which I have never intended to. However, when I posted it on twitter, a few people agreed with my approach, which made me understand that there is a matter of opinion.

I’m not saying all my classes were separated into a boys group and a girls group, it just depended on the ability. It would still be an ability split and granted there were a couple of girls who could compete with the boys, but they did not feel comfortable to be the only two girls in the majority boys group.

I questioned myself a lot on whether I was causing more harm than good, so I decided to ask my students about what they preferred. All the girls did say that they preferred to be in the girls group, mainly because the boys would not include them in the games. Girls would even come up to me during the game and say, the boys are not passing it to me. I would usually modify the game rules then and the would get the girls more involved. When I asked them about which approach they preferred, they would say that they prefer to learn in an all girls group. Yes, it is my responsibility to change this mind set and it has to be done slowly, so the girls grow in confidence and the boys are more receptive. This could be a cultural thing or something that has been accepted before I got here, but when there is opportunity to mix, I will.

However, I still believe in the circumstances that I am in and having tried a mixed approach and segregated approach, the girls excelled further in the segregated approach. During the unit, some girls would then be promoted to the boys group and would be completely comfortable. However, this would not have been possible if I did this at the start. It is just coincidence that when grouping the students into ability groups, there tends to be a more male dominant and female dominant group.

Having said all of that, I have a grade 11 class that are completely mixed and a grade 10 class that are slowly making the shift. I also have a grade 8 class where the girls were better than the boys at touch rugby, but the skills were taught separately to begin with and then they were able to complete. From my experience so far, this is not a rule for all my groups, as it also depends on the unit that I am teaching, but it is something that most of my classes naturally ended up doing, especially during the game units.

Teaching the skeletal system

I just want to share a really good idea that worked for me in my class. I had already seen the idea on the internet and then my colleague had adapted and then I adapted it again to fit it to my class.

We have a health unit in each grade of MYP and it can get pretty boring for the kids and myself to teach, so I’m always looking for ways to get the kids out of the classroom. In the past 2 lessons, I taught my grade 7’s the main bones for the upper body and then played basketball to link which bones are involved in different aspects of the basketball. The second lesson followed the same format but we played kick rounders but the way to get the kicker out was to throw the soft ball at them (lower body). For them to be out, the thrower had to name which bone was hit by the ball and only then they are out.

The kids have really struggled with the terminology so we felt as a department they needed more time to get used to the terminology, so we asked the students to make a rap/song/role play/video using some of the words that we had learnt. That is still very much in the process, and as we will be looking at muscles for the next two lessons, I am looking for them to incorporate those into their original performance.

Now to test their knowledge of the bones, I grouped the students into mixed groups of 4-5 and asked them to create a skeleton using a mixture of PE materials (bats, balls, batons, wickets, cones, yoga mats and plastic bottles). As I’m involved in the eco school project at our school, this was a good way for me to get the recycled items involved (Originally, the plan was to use ONLY plastic bottles, but I didn’t collect enough). I also gave them scrap pieces of paper to use for labels of the skeleton, so they had to organise themselves well in a group to use each other’s strengths to complete this activity.

The rules of the game were simple.

• They had to plan which items their team wanted and prioritise this when they collect.
• They are only allowed to send one member at a time.
• Students had to run from one side of the hall to the other and collect their items and return them to their base.
• They are only allowed to collect one item at a time.
• They can strategise their roles but everyone must be involved in each stage.

You can obviously change the way you do this (my colleague had them to complete circuits and I have also seen someone use sticks) but I was very happy with the results. I did run out of time at the end, so some groups did not finish labelling but I am so proud of what they have produced

.   

Portfolios in PE

I have been making more of an effort to get involved on the social media side of things in regards to my own professional development. As a result of this, I came across a discussion regarding how portfolios were used in the PYP across different schools. It was great to see the collaboration between professionals from different parts of the world bringing up some really good points. Everyone had their own ideas but it was great to see that the schools had a collective stance of how they want to implement the portfolio with collaboration between staff.

Unfortunately, the portfolio is used as a collection of best pieces of a student’s work in our school, which I feel doesn’t show the progression of the student as a whole. This led me into thinking about implementing a PE portfolio and when I was researching about ideas, I came across a website that inspired me with different ideas (pyppewithandy.com) and I know I’m not the first teacher to be inspired by this guy.

Although I’m teaching full-time, I am also on a scholarship to complete a masters and I’ve decided to research about the impact of a portfolio in education. I had to conduct a small study initially to highlight any problems/issues that I may face when I conduct the big dissertation. Without going into the boring details of my assignment, I did find that the portfolio (sportfolio) does have an impact on students (Grade 5) engagement but with such a small sample size, it wasn’t evident. Hopefully I can prove this with a bigger sample size for my dissertation. However there were other findings from this assignment that I didn’t really think about that I thought would be interesting to share to the readers. Also, these are the things I will be addressing in my dissertation.

1. I usually started the portfolio task in class and asked students to finish it at home (10-15 minutes of homework). This would have given them more time, especially the students who are slow workers, to take their time. However, the issue I had was that the students kept forgetting to bring their portfolio sheets back to school. I am very conscious of how much theory work they do in the PE class, as both theory and practical are both important for the students growth and development, but I do think extension activities at home will keep them engaged for longer and possibly apply their knowledge to different contexts or situations.
2. I tried to incorporate a portfolio task per lesson but I found out very quickly that half of the students could keep up on top of the work and half of them couldn’t. This is due to the development of their organisational skills. If students are forgetting their PE attire on a regular basis, how can I expect them to keep on top of their work?
3. When critiquing the literature, I never once thought I could use the portfolio as a communication tool for parents. This actually made sense to me later. Wouldn’t parents day be so much easier if you had the portfolio to refer to and all interested parties can observe the learning journey taken?

I am beginning my research again for my dissertation and I have a few questions you may be able to help me out with.

• I know all the students in PYP have portfolios and I also know the Development workbooks in Performing Arts is compulsory. Is there is any literature specific to IB of why and how a portfolio should be implemented?
• Any literature you have come across in regards to PE and portfolios?
• Any advice or suggestions before I begin my research?

Below are my aims and objectives for my dissertation. I will post a summary of my findings when I complete the masters (next year) but I will keep you up to date on my journey as I go along.

Aims:

• To implement a ‘sportfolio’ to support teaching and learning in Physical Education.
• To explore the ways in which a ‘sportfolio’ promotes learning and engagement in Physical Education.
• To explore the ways a ‘sportfolio’ enables students, teachers and parents to work together to support learning and engagement.

 Main Research Question:

• In what ways can the ‘sportfolio’ promote learning and engagement in Physical Education?
• Sub Research Questions:

• How does the ‘sportfolio’ engage students and support their learning?
• How does the ‘sportfolio’ support the development of teachers practice?
• In what ways does the ‘sportfolio’ engage a parent to support their child’s learning?

Teaching idea: Examples of linking athletics to their UoI

   

I finally got the time to scan some of my students work, which I have used to link their PE unit to the Unit of Inquiry (UoI). In the classroom the grade 6 central idea is ‘Persuasion as a method for altering perspectives and initiating change in the world’ and as we are covering Athletics for their PE unit, I saw this opportunity to link both units together.

I asked the students to persuade me or anyone else to join one athletic discipline that we have covered in our unit or any other discipline they are interested in. For example, we don’t have any Javelins, so the students did a ball throw and we compared this to a Javelin throw. We also used ‘welly wanging’ as another throwing activity, which is something we use for our sports day.

The students discover the technique in the lesson and my only real input is the safety aspect of the lesson. We agree (usually by the middle of the lesson) and then they have the chance to go and practice.  We discussed about what you would include in a poster, leaflet, video of how they would persuade someone to join their athletic discipline and it’s great to see that students use what they have learnt in PE and in their UoI to produce a piece of work that demonstrates their learning from both sides. All my students produced a poster apart from one who created a video (which I am still waiting on).

In hindsight, I should have collaborated with the homeroom teacher at an earlier date to see if our assessments could be combined, as their application of knowledge could be assessed through their persuasive task they are doing in their UoI. Something to improve on for next year!

Differentiating learning objectives/outcomes

 In the UK, where there is heavy emphasis on progression and differentiation from OFSTED, differentiating learning outcomes is another way you can cater to your learner’s needs. Although we don’t have OFSTED in International schools (how lucky are we?), differentiating learning outcomes is a good practice and a great way to personalise learning for the different abilities in your class.

The reason why I’m discussing this is because I feel it’s important to identify the difference between outcomes and objectives and determine how they should be used before you can design an effective Scheme of Work (SOW) or Programme of Inquiry (POI). I have seen some objectives/outcomes that are too easy/hard, not achievable, wordy or not measurable and this can affect the progression of your students.

Learning objectives and outcomes are defined differently amongst teachers, schools and countries, which is fine but you have to be aware of it. For the purpose of this blog, I will define them as how I use them in my practice.

Learning Objectives (can also be known as Aims) – This describes what a student should know or be able to do at the end of the unit. The objectives should then be assessed through your formative and summative tasks, which I will discuss in a later post.

Learning Outcomes (can also be known as Aims or objectives) – This describes how a student will demonstrate their learning and is linked with your learning objectives. They don’t all have to be linked to all the objectives in one lesson. For example, you may have three outcomes for one lesson that is only appropriate to one objective. That is fine, as long as all the objectives are met through the implementation of the whole unit. Look at it this way, learning outcomes are small stepping stones to get to your overall objective(s).

Depending on the length of your lesson determines how many outcomes are appropriate. Another factor to take into account is the ability of your class, as some groups need longer than others to achieve the outcomes. (A general rule of thumb is to select 2-3 lesson outcomes for a 60-80 minute lesson). This is where differentiated learning outcomes are appropriate. You may have a weaker student who will take the whole lesson just to achieve one outcome, whereas a higher abled student will be able to achieve three outcomes in that same amount of time. For those outcomes to be effective and appropriate, you will need to know your class, so it may take a while to get them right, especially if you have just started with a new class.

The example I’m going to give below is based on 3 learning outcomes, so if you have more, you will need to modify them.*

1) The first outcome should be achievable by ALL students, with the focus on the lower abled student.

2) The second outcome should be achievable by MOST students, with the focus on the middle abled student.

3) The third outcome should be achievable by SOME students, with the focus on the higher abled student.

* Like I mentioned above, if you have more than 3 outcomes for your lesson, then you decide which ability groups the extra learning outcomes are for.

To put the above into practice, I have given a more specific example of how I’ve used this concept for my grade 5 Games PE class. I’m also going to highlight what I would be looking for to determine that students have achieved these outcomes.

1) All students are able to identify the different types of passes used in basketball.

What I’m looking for? Students are able to identify the different types of passes and possibly explain the process of implementing a successful pass in basketball. I know there are several passes and this outcome could be further differentiated by focusing on one or two passes, but as my students have had some experience in basketball from grade 4, they were ALL able to explore 3 types of passes and explain the basic technique for each one.

2) Most students are able to demonstrate the different types of passes.

What I’m looking for? Students are able to demonstrate the different types of passes in basketball in drills or short activities. This outcome is developed on the knowledge gained from the previous outcome, and again, I know there are several passes that they could demonstrate but MOST students had enough time to display these skills.

3) Some students are able to pass the ball in a game situation as a team.

What I’m looking for? Students are able to implement these passes in a game situation and this can be more achievable if this was done through a modified game, which focused on passing. I know this outcome is difficult for a younger student, but I am confident there will be a small number of students who will be able to do this and this outcome will stretch them. I also know that most of the students would be able to achieve this later in grade 6/7 when they have had the opportunity to explore basketball further and therefore allows for progression amongst grade levels.

The traffic light (colour) system is something that I have seen when I was a teaching assistant/trainee and it is something I have adopted in my own practice. You can use this colour system for activities/tasks that can be linked to the outcomes, as well as assessment grades, which allows for further differentiation in class. I am sure there are other ways you can use this colour system but the colours are not a major factor for differentiating learning outcomes. You can use other systems that you and your kids are familiar with.

My challenge for you is to try to differentiate learning outcomes for at least one group and reflect on if it has an impact on your learners and/or on your teaching practice?

Good luck!