Education Games

The physical education games that are described in this article can be played at the beginning of gym class as part of a warm exercise, during the period wholly or partially devoted to games or physical education activities or at the end of class as part of cool down exercises. In addition to the obvious benefits of providing good exercise, combating obesity and developing motor skills, the other skills that I wanted my students to demonstrate when they play these games are co-operation, sportsmanship and enjoyment.

Here are 6 examples of physical education games that my students and I enjoyed.

1. Face to Face

Scatter formation (possibly in a large circle) with partners. One odd player stands in the center and alternates between calling “Face to Face” and “Back to Back”. The students take the positions accordingly. When he calls “All change” the students must find new partners and the center player tries to get one too. The student left without a partner goes to the center and gives the commands. If there was no “odd student” then I played too.

2. Partner Tag

All of the students but two hook arms in couples. Of the two that are free one is “it” or the chaser and the other is the runner. The runner tries to avoid being tagged by locking arms with either member of any couple he chooses. When he does, the third student of the group becomes the runner and must avoid being tagged. If the runner is tagged the runner and chaser change positions. To make the activity interesting, the couples should run and twist to elude the runner. For a large number of students there can be more than one runner and chaser.

3. Catch the Cane

Have the students form a circle or divide the class in two and make two circles. Each student has a number from 1 to the end. One student is “It” and stands in the middle of the circle holding a cane or yard/meter stick with one end on the floor. This student calls out one of the numbers and lets go of the cane. The student whose number was called, must catch the cane before it falls to the floor. If he fails he becomes “It”.

4. Overpass

Divide the class into 2 even teams ( or 4 for a large class and run two games simultaneously). Team 1 forms a circle and each member of team 2 stands between two members of team 1. A team 1 member holds a ball (volleyball, soccer ball, football, etc.) and a member of team 2 holds the same type of ball (differentiate the balls, colour, etc.).

On the word “go”, each team member passes their ball to their team member on their right (or left). The team that completes the full circle with their ball gets a point.

The teacher can vary the game by calling out, “circle” (the student with the ball must run around the circle before passing the ball) or “zig-zag” or “bounce the ball”, etc. I’m sure you get the idea. It’s great fun.

5. Pass and Change

Arrange all the students in the class except one in a circle of about 40 feet in diameter. The student who is “it” stands in the center of the circle with a large (soft) ball.

To start, “it” calls the names of two students in the circle and at the same time throws the ball to a third student. The two students whose names were called, run to exchange places in the circle. The third student, upon catching the ball, throws it back to “it”. “It” then throws the ball at one of the two students, trying to hit one before they manage to change places. If “it” succeeds in hitting one, the student who was hit becomes “it”.

The education of children is so important nowadays that you shouldn’t leave it up to the schools. Schools do their best but there is more to giving your children a head start in life than what is taught in schools. Schools can only do so much and if your child starts to get left behind in any subject it is time for you – the parents – to step up and do something about it. And that is not going to the school and throwing a tantrum.

It is time to start taking control of your child’s future. In Asia the education of children is so important that most students do extra classes outside of school hours. And they nearly all try to learn English. Because they know if they can get ahead in English they will have a very good chance of getting a good job.

In the Western World there doesn’t seem to be as much emphasis on education. Schools have gone from a place of learning to some place for kids to go during the day. Elementary children’s education in the west is still very good but in high school it starts to fall down.

I think a lot has to do with attitude towards the future. Over the last 30 years we have had a good life and kids have never worried about the future. But that is about to change and I think that will affect the attitude of children towards to education. In China before the economic miracle children needed a good education to survive. But now over the last 10 to 15 years this generation has only seen magnificent cities grow out of the paddy fields. So the children’s education standards are dropping dramatically. They are catching up to the west in more ways that one.

Online education was reviewed three years ago preceded by Oscar Wilde’s quotation “The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever”. My intention was to amuse, rather than to denigrate online education, although the conclusions reached in the literature at that time about its success were mixed. This special issue comprises a number of articles mainly from people working in various parts of the world; content and technology are nicely balanced.

You will notice that there is a noticeable trend towards getting to grips with the difficult but essential matter of evaluation discussed by Merisotis and Phipps. James Merisotis and Ronald Phipps are senior staff members of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington.

There seem to be roughly equal number of enthusiasts and skeptics so the conclusions of Merisotis and Phipps are unsurprising. During their review they unearthed “several hundred articles, papers, and dissertations” and list what they consider to be the shortcomings of research on the subject. They believe that “more emphasis has been placed on the Utopian possibilities of the technology and its potential to do as well as classroom-based instruction, but not enough pragmatism has been applied to allow for a discussion of online education’s practical implications as a supplement to enhance teaching and learning”. They also believe that technology can “leverage faculty time but it cannot replace most human contact without significant quality losses”.

Gordon Joyes and Rachel Scott from the Centre for Teaching Enhancement at the University of Nottingham write about the inadequacies of teachers. They are commenting on a ten-university European project called SteelCAL. New learning technologies are not effectively “embedded in the day to day practice of learning and teaching in most higher educational institutions… the main reason is that many academics have had no training and little experience in the use of communications and information technology as an educational tool”. Note that Joyes and Scott mention under “Full Evaluation” that they are comparing “the effectiveness of SteelCAL with an experimental group of students to a matched control group who are taught traditionally”. It will be interesting to hear exactly how they do it. As they say this exercise is “difficult to organize”.

Dr. Martin Oliver, a member of the higher education research and development unit at University College, London, describes the difficulties of evaluating online teaching and learning. In talking about the importance of evaluation he says: “The drive to evaluate has not been matched by support and training for the practitioners who are supposed to carry out these processes”. He concludes that the issues raised in his article “represent only the starting point for an ongoing discourse on the evaluation of online learning and teaching”.

Anthony Rosie’s article is about his experience covering “meaningful engagement and the enjoyment of learning” following the ideas developed by Biggs who suggests that “Relational knowledge involves students in developing systems of interconnection between concepts and learning approaches with teaching as a contributor to this linkage”.

Bernard Scott from the Centre of Educational Technology at De Montfort University talks about the CASTE system for course design and the matter of “conversations” between system and student. Scott was associated with Gordon Pask who died in 1996 and was regarded as a founding father of Cybernetics. The Web of Science shows that Pask’s 1976 book about Conversation Theory has been cited 66 times since it was published. CASTE is being used at De Montford as part of a master’s level program in learning and teaching.

Diana Thompson and Garry Homer are situated at the University of Wolverhampton which is also active at other sites in Shropshire notably at the new town of Telford. Wolverhampton and Telford are two of the few large towns in one of the most rural counties in England with a widely dispersed population mainly engaged in agriculture. The authors describe the way in which IT training is carried out at all levels for people in the county.

Mr. M.J. Wood is the enterprising head teacher of a Maidstone secondary school which recently won an award for its Web site. He is under no illusions about what has to be done “on a scale of 1 to 20 for measuring the potential use of IT in teaching and learning. I would not be confident to place us beyond point 1″. He comments on the climate of opinion at home: “If parents realize that there is a shortage of text books in a school they will be quick to complain but as yet they see access to computers as a luxury. One of our teachers recently discovered that 24 pupils out of a teaching group of 25 have access to the Internet at home. I suspect that one Christmas in the near future our pupils’ stockings will be filled with cheap hand-held devices which, among other features, will provide Internet access”.