THE GREAT DEBATE!!!!

The Great Debate started off slow and heated up quickly.  The Sports with Sticks group tried to bring up some points as to why children should learn how to play sports.  They brought up a couple of good reasons to why children should learn how to play sports at a young age but seemed to leave out the relation to physical eduction.  I believe students should learn how to play some organized sports at a young age but I feel that the decision is up to the parents of the child over the physical educator.  As a physical education teacher you may see some students only one or twice a week, three times a week at most for fifty minutes, you need to have the students physically engaged in all the activities in order for them to get the most out of physical education.  Playing sports with sticks most of the time requires students sharing equipment and waiting on lines.

As a board of education member we made a decision that the skills group should be taught in a K-6 grade setting and lifetime activities group should be taught from grades 7-12.  

At a young age children need to learn locomotor movements because you can apply all of the movements  to other athletic activities outside of the class room. Skills such as hoping, skipping, jumping, leaping, sliding, and running are very important to teach while students are young because they can apply those movements in other activities and sports.  Once a student hits seventh grade I believe teaching skills will get repetitive and they will lose interest in physical education.  This is where lifetime activities come into play.  When you can play activities in class that students can relate to outside of the class room it will encourage them to be active. Students love being active and are filled with energy, as a physical educator at the secondary level you did your job if your students are leaving class tired and sweaty.  Using games that require limited equipment that keep everyone in class involved and use skills mostly everyone had developed by the time they have reached 7th grade is important. 

The debate went over very well in class and everyone actively participated. I loved how it was live streamed to the rockstarpe blog and we were able to tweet about certain questions or comments that came up during the debate. It shows you that technology can and should be used in physical education setting!