Routines and Procedures
Routines are essential for a smoothly run and efficient class. They should be established early on in the semester/school year and be maintained, enforced, and respected in order to achieve success. Here are some routines and procedures that were useful in our class:
- Bathroom Privileges: Students must ask to use the restroom. Only one student is able to be out of class at a time. If we notice a pattern, we will have a conversation one on one with the student about their needs.
- Gym Strip: On days that students have PE they are expected to wear sport appropriate clothes that they can move around in.
- Warmup: Upon getting into the gym students know to run 2 laps of the gym before sitting down and waiting for instruction.
- Freeze/Stop: When a whistle is blown, students know to stop what they are doing and focus their attention to the teacher. If there are issues with students not paying attention, or playing with equipment during instruction, equipment will be taken from the student.
- Dismissal: After a quick debrief students will be released from the gym by the teacher.
Discipline Strategies
Ideally, with proper routines and guidelines, misbehaviour is mostly mitigated. However, if a problem does arise we can deal with it with the following in mind:
- Why is the student acting like this? - time of day, situation at home, stress etc.
- How can we mitigate this?
- Use positive language, focus on future participation in class rather than the incident - move forward
- If a pattern arises, have a private one on one conversation to address student needs
Grouping Strategies
Students in this class often partnered with their friends. This made it so that they were usually playing the same people and not being challenged. To alleviate this, we had students get into partners (they all chose their friends) and had them choose 1 or 2. All the 1's went to a court with myself, while the 2’s went with Brett.
Another issue we had was making sure not to place the more coordinated and athletic players onto one team. To alleviate this, while making teams through counting off students, we intentionally would skip students and have not uniform patterns of selection so that we could ensure that one team did not dominate the rest.
Behaviour Expectations
Students are expected to be respectful, fair, and friendly to each other. Students are to participate in all activities to the best of their ability. Adaptations and modifications will allow students to participate at different levels, while still being involved in class and making an effort.
Students are to respect the equipment and gym itself.
No tolerance for bullying.