Movement stories for junior primary students

I was listening to a PE Geek Podcast the other day and came across a great resource for junior primary teachers that gets kids moving using stories as a basis for those movements. The stories are produced by BBC School Radio and posted to their website. The idea is that students listen and as part of the story the narrator instructs students on different movements that connect with the narrative for example, stomping through a forest, sneaking into a dragons cave or clanking around in a knights suit of armour. I tried one with my R/1 PE class today and they absolutely loved it! The story we listened to was called Knights, Castles and Dragons.

Knights, Castles and Dragons – the students loved it!

 

Click here to view all the available BBC Let’s Move podcasts. Each podcast can be downloaded to your computer so internet access is not required when you play the file.

Keep in mind that these are just audio files. The next time I use one of these with a class I am planning to make up a slide show of images that relates to the story so the students also have something to look at while they are moving and listening to the story.

Australian Curriculum – Draft Shape Papers Technologies and HPE

These Draft Shape Papers in Technologies and Health & Physical Education have just been released and should be of some interest to primary teachers and specialist secondary teachers in these areas. I have had a quick glance over them and put some information below taken directly from the Draft Shape Papers.

 

Draft Shape Paper Australian Curriculum: Technologies click here to access

“This paper proposes that the Australian Curriculum: Technologies comprises two strands for the Foundation Year to Year 8 and two subjects for Years 9 to12 namely, Design and technologies and Digital technologies.”

“The now ubiquitous nature of digital technologies resulting from digitisation, the miniaturisation and embedding of microelectronics into a range of products, and wireless networking, means that students of all ages and abilities expect to be able to play, learn and study anytime and anywhere, and to design and produce solutions using design and computational thinking and traditional, contemporary and emerging technologies.”

 

Draft Shape Paper Australian Curriculum: Health & Physical Education click here to access

It is proposed that the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education has two integrated strands for F–10:

1. Personal, social and community health

2. Movement and physical activity.

“Traditionally, Health and Physical Education curricula in Australia have adopted a risk-based model focusing on when and how young people experience risky health behaviours and exploring reasons why and how they could change these behaviours. The emphasis on risk factors and groups at risk (for example young people, Indigenous Australians, ethnic minorities) has been widely criticised for unnecessarily alienating young people, and frequently laying blame on them for their failure to meet expectations of self-management. By taking a strengths-based approach the Australian Curriculum: Health & Physical Education will prioritise the questions – what keeps people healthy? and what helps people to be active?”