Pick up any exercise, fitness, or nutrition magazine and you read a consistent message sent to folks trying to adopt a physically active lifestyle (especially those still applying their New Year's resolution). The message is to:
- Add variety to your exercise life by trying new sports and activities.
- Connect with others around you, and make exercise time a social experience.
- Find something you enjoy doing and stick with it, because exercise should not be boring.
- Set realistic, short-tem goals and reward yourself appropriately, and
- Find a time of day that works for you and make it your time.
I ponder these points as I try to lead my own physically active lifestyle, but I also wonder about my high school physical education classes over twenty years ago - and I wonder if much has changed. Is the fall still reserved for flag football and soccer, winter still basketball and volleyball, and does spring still end with softball and track? It's not as if anything was wrong with that I suppose, of course. As someone closing in on 40, I don't really play any of those sports anymore. But I wonder, given what we know about the five points above, can physical education that hasn't changed in 20 years be considered "effective?"
Jon Poole
Section Editor
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| Hot Ideas from PE Central |
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Middle and High School Lesson Ideas
This link directs you to PE Central's Middle and High School Lesson Ideas Section which is intended to help share some of the exciting lesson ideas submitted by teachers.
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| Secondary PE Teaching Ideas |
Teaching Fitness
Chuck Corbin, one of the true leaders in physical education, suggests focusing on the process of achieving physical fitness, not simply on the product assessed through fitness tests. He says, "...promote knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that will result in both exercise and fitness for a lifetime. In the final analysis, however, it is the process of exercise that is most important. If we can get people to do correct exercise for a lifetime (the process), the product (physical fitness) will follow. We will have met our objectives when the process becomes a regular, permanent part of a person's lifestyle" (p.65).
- from R. Pate and R. Hohn, (1994)
Health and Fitness Through Physical Education
Available from Human Kinetics
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"Achieving success is like climbing a mountain. You can stand off from afar,
and glimpse at the summit. But if you
are wise, you will quickly turn away such contemplation and start organizing
yourself, and get on the way"
-- Percy Cerutty
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| Secondary Health Teaching Ideas |
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How to Survive Teaching Health
Accountability has never been more critical in physical and health education classes. As many states continue to question the role of physical and health education, some "old" resources can provide some help.
How to Survive Teaching Health: Games, Activities, and Worksheets for Grades 4-12 is a text from 1990 that offers literally hundreds of activities and worksheets that could be adapted for take home assignments. As the father of an elementary-aged child, I would love to see my child bring home a worksheet asking him to trace the flow of blood to, and from, working muscles and the heart!
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Please let your colleagues know about PELINKS4U, and remember you can catch up on a year's worth of news in our PE Archives.
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Check out what teachers Dr. Sharon Cooke and Mr. Steve Tranter are doing at Indian Hill Middle School in Cincinnati, Ohio. This site includes program philosophy (tied to NASPE standards) and much more!
Check out Lake Park High School's award winning program (recognized as an
exemplary program by the Illinois Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance).
This site will be of particular interest to those of you interested in designing, or redesigning, a Health and Physical Education Program across grades 9-12.
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If you have ideas, comments, letters to share, or questions about particular topics, please email one of the following Secondary PE Section Editors:
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Help to support quality physical education and health education by contributing to this site.
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More good work out of the Department of Health and Human Services.
