Determining a Grade in PE A grade is a judgment, not a calculation. This is the first in a 4-part series on grading in PE. Rather than starting at the beginning of the grading process, we're starting at the end, with the moment a grade gets determined, and then working backwards from there, week by week. Why start at the end? Because it's where many of us are right now, or fast approaching, and it's where the questions about grading feel sharpest. So, we begin with the one that sits at the...
12 days ago • 5 min read
Making Grading in PE Make Sense Bringing more clarity to grading in PE for ourselves and our students. In the last few months, I've led numerous workshops at conferences and with schools in different parts of the world. Regardless of the location or how I'm engaging with PE teachers, the same tensions about grading in PE keep showing up. These aren't new tensions either. I've seen and heard them surfacing over the years I've been working in this area. Some of these tensions sound like this:...
20 days ago • 2 min read
What are PE students learning from “good job”? Praise feels supportive, but it doesn’t give students the information they need to improve. As PE teachers, we have been there. Students are engaged, working on the skill you just taught, and we do not want to disrupt them. So we move around the gym offering encouragement. "Good job." "Way to go." "Keep it up." It feels like we are helping. But are students actually getting the information they need to improve? A question to consider Praise is...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Feedback That Gets Students Thinking in PE In PE, feedback often tells students exactly what to do. So, the thinking stays with the teacher, not the students. Feedback is a regular part of teaching PE. It is also one of those things that can feel like it is not working as often as it should. Students hear it, go back in, and not much changes. Most of the time, it comes down to one thing: the teacher is doing the thinking, not the student. When we tell students exactly what to do and how...
2 months ago • 3 min read
A Simple Way to Make Assessment Work in PE Assessment in PE can feel harder than it needs to. Here are a few reasons, along with a simple framework that works in a PE class. Ask PE teachers how they feel about assessment and the word you hear most often isn't "useful" or "informative." It's more likely to be "awkward", "ugh", "loss of activity time." For a lot of PE teachers, assessment feels like something tacked onto a lesson that was already going fine. A pause mid-activity, the class...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Clarifying a Misconception About Assessment in PE At a nation PHE Canada conference, I ran a workshop on making self-assessment in PE both meaningful and manageable. The room was jammed with people sitting on the floor, lining the walls, even tucked in behind the projector screen. We had everyone there: pre-service PE teachers, K–12 PE teachers, professors, people from education groups, and more. The interest in assessment was real. And the conversations after? Energizing. But one stuck with...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Making Feedback Land in PE Assessing in PE Without Demotivating Students Picture this: a teacher watches a student demonstrate a movement pattern they’ve been working on developing. The teacher knows exactly what needs to be corrected but hesitates to give them feedback. If I say something, will they shut down?Will they think they can’t succeed in PE?They’re already not the most enthusiastic student in class. So, the moment passes. The feedback never comes. If you’ve ever felt uneasy about...
3 months ago • 3 min read
When Teaching PE Leaves You with Little Left in the Gas Tank Hi Reader, At this point in the year, teaching PE can start to feel different than it did earlier on. Lessons are running. Routines are established. Students generally know what’s expected. Things are working, and that is good. And yet, for many PE teachers, the end of the day now comes with a quiet, familiar thought. “Phew. I got through that.” It is often paired with feeling more tired and sore than they remember earlier in the...
4 months ago • 3 min read
What Irrelevant PD Tells Us About Student Engagement in PE Hi Reader, As physical education teachers, we all know what it feels like to sit through PD that feels irrelevant, unimportant, or completely disconnected from what we want to focus on in our teaching. What if that experience was not occasional?Imagine it was your lived reality every day, for a full semester, or even an entire school year. The topics are chosen for you.The way you are expected to engage is already decided.Your...
5 months ago • 2 min read