Lesson Plan Ideas for Teaching PE Remotely [Interactive]

This PE podcast will share many home learning lessons and how to teach those lessons without overwhelming their students. Maria Corte is a Physical Education teacher at Mesa High School in Mesa, Arizona.

[0:02] Well, so here we are a bunch of PE teachers who are used to teaching and in big spaces working alongside our students. We were used to teaching on the move, managing on the move, motivating on the move. We’re on our feet all day, wishing we could somehow stop and sit down just for a minute. We find ourselves now in our living rooms, teaching remotely through our phones and computers. It’s amongst the craziest thing I’ve seen in over 26 years of teaching.

[0:53] So what I want to talk about today is online learning and that is the hot topic of the day of the month it’s looking like and maybe even more, unfortunately. But what I’m noticing is there’s just so much information. It’s so new and everybody is just working so hard and so diligently on trying to figure this all out and with that becomes a lot of confusion. For example, just the fact online learning. I’ve heard it called distance learning. I’ve heard it called remote learning, homeschooling, we can’t even get the title straight. So you can imagine the receiving end from the students on what they’re experiencing right now. Look, one thing I know for sure about PE teachers is that we’re highly motivated and highly competitive and, and it is prevalent in what I’m seeing from my colleagues, from PE teachers around the state of Arizona, from what I see on Twitter, from PE teachers all over the country, all over the world. Everybody is working so hard to try to figure this out and they’re coming up with just fantastic things to do with their students and very creative things to do with their students from home.

[2:07] But how do we keep it all straight? How do we take what we need and not overwhelm the students because in my opinion, it’s a little overwhelming for me, there’s so much stuff and I don’t even know where to start and I don’t even know how to share it with my students at this point. So that’s what I want to talk about today a little bit.

Keep It Simple for Students

[2:30] Before we talk about some of the great things that we could be doing from home I do want to just maybe talk about some key points that at least I’m going to be doing or reminding myself with my students. The first thing is we got to stay light whenever we’re communicating with the students stay positive, stay light, we don’t want to be heavy at this point they got enough to worry about. So we just want to to give them little reminders about some just wellness topics of washing their hands and staying safe and and practice the social distancing. But also make sure, again, that we don’t overwhelm them with too much information. I would keep it and I am trying to keep it very simple post one thing a day. And the one thing a day that I am posting is short, concise, simple, like go outside for 10 minutes and maybe try that, you know, maybe three to six times a day, or tell them to do something on their own anything that they’d like to do for about 10-15 minutes in the day and maybe do that a couple times. Maybe they want to walk their dog or they want to play with chalk or they want to go walk around the block a few times.

A Few Tips I’ve Learned

[3:51] So with that said, with those few little tips, there are some just fantastic things that I’m seeing on Twitter. One thing I’m seeing is challenges. I think those are good a lot of PE teachers are saying there’s there are showing them there’s a water bottle challenge or a push up challenge or a crunches challenge, plank challenge. There’s all kinds I’m seeing a common thread of that. There’s also videos of themselves. I think the students would really enjoy seeing you in front of their TV screen or phone. There is workouts from people are posting from YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, lots of videos there. I’m also seeing some really cute videos of PE teachers doing little fitness ideas with their own children. That kind of makes it personal too, also some easy bodyweight exercises using household items. All that is just great, great stuff. I’m keeping it real simple. I’m emailing my students using the platform that our district uses and I’m just saying good morning each day and I may even just type up little idea of a lesson forum or clip one video. But again, we don’t need to stress out on this. You don’t need to be a professional techie at had this time. Let’s just stick with what we know best and that is motivating kids to be active.

[5:20] So remember, keep it simple, keep it light. Try to ride this out as positively as you can. Again, remember, this is temporary. And I know all of us are really looking forward to getting back into the gym back outside, back onto the court wherever you teach. And, and let’s be safe out there. Thanks so much. Bye bye.