Health Resources for Kids

Schemes of work: Secondary Physical education The materials and the teacher's guide at this site help you review or create your own scheme of work by downloading and editing text. Benny Goodsport The central character is Benny the fitness clown. The site uses him and several other cartoon characters to teach children about physical fitness and nutrition. Munch n Move Exercise A downloadable collection of songs for kids to exercise to. For younger children. Health Heart Tips for Children This site covers nutrition and weight control, exercise, smoking, and helping kids to learn good choice making. Smoke Free Socker The SmokeFree Soccer program is an innovative collaboration between the US Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and National Cancer Institute. The program models the "SmokeFree" lifestyle of the US Women's National Soccer Team and encourages adolescent girls (and boys!) to participate in soccer as a way to maintain physical fitness and resist pressures to smoke.

Archives

Please let your colleagues know about PELINKS4U, and remember you can catch up on a year's worth of news in our PE Archives.

After two decades of teaching under Title IX and being forced to maintain coed classes in the high school, my feeling about conducting mixed classes from grades 9th and above have changed. Mind you, for a decade I had an open mind and thought anything was possible. Now I think of coed classes at the high school level a gross injustice. This is not because there are no advantages. There are - sometimes. But, I couldn't always tap them. That depended to much on outside variables. For example, I could not control the class resister. It was controlled by a school administrator and a computer. So, in the fall, when class lists were distributed and greatly skewed to one sex or the other, there was nothing I could do but try my best to accommodate both groups. Admittedly, whatever I did, the minority was hampered. It is instances like this, that make me say flat out, I'd rather give up teaching COED classes. It is in that same breath that I wonder, hasn't the intend of Title IX been misinterpreted? I leave room to admit I am wrong. Perhaps the problems were mine. But here is where I like readers to come in. Please, focus on the problem below. If you are kind enough to send me your thoughts and possible solutions, I'll post them with your name and school, if you like. See if you can. By the way, what you see below is what occurred in two of my ten classes each year... no joke. Your class register creates administrative gender inequity. The imbalance of girls to boys, or vice versa, is so grossly distorted that the minority is seriously compromised. What if you had a class where 90% of the students were of the same sex? What if 90% were girls? What if 90% were the boys? Is a 70% to 30% split significantly better?

Is Isobel Right? What do you think about coed physical education? Does it help or hurt? Post your comments on our new Forum in the Secondary PE section. We'll feature selected comments in a later edition.

Fitness

Some Yoga web sites that might be of interest while you help your class move toward Fitness. www.efit.com demonstrates common, and not so common, exercises with fitness balls, stretches and in line skates. www.yogabasics.com - lessons on meditation, breathing, and poses. www.yogasite.com - a repository of yoga information that includes detailed diagrams of poses.

A good lesson plan takes more than deciding what to teach. It takes knowing how kids learn so you can plan for their success and not miss reinforcing their accomplishments, as minimal as they might seem to your students. When teachers only recognize the final product, they risk killing the students enthusiasm for learning. That's why early goal setting is essential and should be based on the steps in the process, not the final product. I don't think anyone would argue against the notion that students enjoy what they do when they feel they can succeed. That's why beginning lessons in Complete Physical Education Plans for Grades 7-12 frequently say "don't go on until your class reaches 100% success." I was asked by my editors, "didn't I make a mistake," and was emphatic that no, I didn't. I know there are skeptics who think me wrong, that aiming for 100% success means watering down material until you're not teaching anything. But I remember being a beginner skier who got off the chairlift at the top of the mountain, looked down to the bottom, and froze thinking I'd never get there in one piece. Once I could make myself focus on one turn at a time, I had no problem with moving ahead. That's all I am suggesting teachers have students do. Start them focusing on part of the skill they can accomplish without incurring fear of failure. Then move them along. The truth is, if early goal setting is good, 100% success comes quickly. Then you can move on and the rest of your class with you. Do I expect all students to be swept through the full range of goals at the same pace as their classmates? No. Do I think those who can throw accurately at 5 yards, can also be accurate at 15, 20, 30 yards and so on? No, I don't. But how about going from 5 to 7 and then 10? Will they stay with you? Probably. Will it be bad for the rest of the class? Since when was repetition ever bad for anyone? Being able to work with students whose progress is slow, and reminding them that they were successful at one point and shouldn't give up, builds confidence. Often it is just that confidence that is the difference between learning or not. For one thing, it motivates continued effort. That is why teachers need to know the last point of success for each of their students, and have arranged for it from the start. Isobel Kleinman

Contribute YOUR Ideas

If you have ideas, comments, letters to share, or questions about particular topics, please email one of the following Secondary PE Section Editors:

	Jon Poole
	Bane McCracken
	Darla Castelli
	Isobel Kleinman