Changing the Approach to Teaching Elementary Physical Education

1
Skill Themes

• Changing the Approach to Teaching Elementary
  Physical Education

2
Skill Themes

• Not just content, but also the process of
  teaching
• Developed from an ethic of encouraging children
  to develop positive attitudes about activity
• Skill themes are based upon developmentally
  appropriate practices

3
Definition

• Fundamental movements that are later modified to
  more specialized patterns
• Involves the development of activities of
  increasing complexity
• Involve locomotor, nonlocomotor and manipulative
  skills

4
Characteristics of Skill Themes

• Competence in performance is a major purpose
• versus an emphasis on game play
• Designed to provide experiences appropriate to a
  childs developmental level
• as opposed to age or grade level
• Scope and sequence of skill themes are designed
  to reflect the needs of students over a period of
  years
• frequent revisiting of themes

5
Constructing Commonalities

• Select any sport
• Identify the basic skills
• both movement and manipulative
• Identify the carry over skills to one other game
• Themes apply to different sports, although their
  use differs in context and emphasis

6
Locomotor Skill Themes

• Walking
• Running
• Hopping
• Skipping
• Galloping
• Sliding
• Chasing, Fleeing and Dodging

7
Manipulative Skills

• Throwing
• Catching and Collecting
• Kicking
• Punting
• Dribbling

• Volleying
• Striking with rackets
• Striking with long handled implements

8
Nonmanipulative Themes

• Jumping and landing
• Stretching
• Curling

• Turning
• Twisting
• Rolling
• Balancing
• Transferring weight

9
Movement Concepts

• Are ideas used to modify or enrich the range and
  effectiveness of skill employment
• Skill themes are always verbs
• things you can DO
• Movement concepts are always modifiers
• descriptions of how
• Children need to learn and understand the
  movement concept vocabulary
• e.g. light force

10
Generic Levels of Skill Proficiency

• A key challenge in teaching is to match the task
  to the ability of the child
• and we know how those vary
• We can identify 4 generic levels of skill
• precontrol, control, utilization, proficiency
• Study box 7-1 page 95
• Children can vary significantly across skill
  themes for their levels of proficiency
• Therefore, within a given task, we need to use
  strategies for individualizing performance