Sports Ed in Physics
This year in EPHE 452 a course by Dr. Hopper at the University of Victoria a big focus was the Sports Education model in a physical education class. This model includes students begin separated into different teams and compete throughout the duration of a unit or semester. This team setting is used as a motivation tool to promote participation and development of students by the awarding of team points and using the competitive nature of the students.
This model has been shown to be extremely successful in a physical education setting but how would it look in a traditional classroom?
With physics being my second teaching area I will be in this "traditional" classroom for a large portion of my teaching career and it would be very interesting to see how it could be integrated into this setting.
Gamification Video
Sport Education with Arbutus Students
For this grade 8 class we applied the sports ed model over the span on 3 classes. The main focus of our model revolved around instructing pickleball to the students which were separated into 4 teams; salmon, wolves, bears, ravens.
We found the sports ed model to be extremely effective when teaching these students in a physical education setting. Most importantly, the students were motivated to learn and develop their skills. This motivation is key to the success of any type of learning which is why this model has been so effective.
For the final lesson we held a pickle ball tournament were the teams ]competed against one another over a series of several individual games. From these results points were then collected into the overall points totals which had been accumulated since the fist class.
Below are the outlines to the pickleball festival, record keeping method, tournament schedule, images taken throughout our time with the class, tactics used throughout our lessons, and our lesson plans.
Gamification
One model which is very similar to the sports ed model is the "gamification" model outlined in this video to the left.
Gamification, like sports ed, uses games and point reward systems for students to progress towards a final points goal. One thing emphasized in the video is the idea of students beginning with zero points and working their way forwards. This then acts as a motivator as students can see their progressions and gaining of points rather than dropping of percentage throughout the term. This is another similarity between the two models as sports ed also begins at zero and has teams only gain points over the course of the unit/ term.
There are some distinct differences between the models however. Gamification does have some class oriented activities but it largely seemed individualized for each student. In the sports ed model points are designated solely by to teams, there is little to no individualization and absolutely no individual points. Also, the sports ed model entails an accumulative year end event or festival which gamification does not include.