This is the first article in the four-part series Assessing Without Sacrificing Activity Time. The series grew out of a question I hear often from PE teachers: How can we assess student learning without losing valuable activity time?

This week, we begin by looking at what changes when we focus our assessment attention on a few students at a time.

You’ve spent the first part of class teaching, and now your 27 students are spread throughout the gym, moving, playing, and putting that learning into practice. You want to see how they’re doing, but with so many students moving at once, it can be difficult to focus on each student long enough to get a clear picture of their learning.

Maybe you’ve set up a few small-sided games or split the class into different playing areas. But the dilemma is still there: how can you assess student learning when they are all moving at once?

Assessing learning in PE can be quite different than it is in other subject areas, as students are not seated neatly in rows doing their work. They are moving in and among others as they engage in their learning, which can pull our attention in many directions. When it constantly moves from student to student, we can only get a glimpse of what they are able to do.

And what we happen to see in that glimpse matters. You might catch a student during a strong moment, a mistake, a brief lapse in focus, or a situation that does not really show what they can do. While any of these moments can tell us something, observing a student for a few seconds is not enough to understand how they are doing with their learning.

Do We Need to Assess Everyone in Every Class?

The challenge of assessing students without sacrificing activity time is one of the most common concerns I’ve heard in the many years I’ve worked with PE teachers and departments on assessment. And it makes sense when we take a step back to consider what we’re actually asking ourselves to do:

We would never try to assess students this way in an English class, or any class for that matter. So, in PE, the question is not how we can assess everyone at once, but whether we need to.

Do we need to assess every student’s learning in every PE class? No, we don’t.

Focus on a Few Students at a Time

Rather than trying to assess everyone in each class, we can deliberately focus our assessment attention on a smaller group of students. We still teach, observe, and respond to student needs as we normally would, but when it comes to assessing learning, we can choose 5 to 6 students to observe more closely.

The exact number of students you focus on will depend on your context. What matters is choosing a number that is manageable for you, then focusing on a different group in the next class.

Focusing on a few students allows us to get a deeper understanding of what they can currently do and how we can respond to what we’ve seen. Rather than relying on one or two brief observations, we can see the same students across multiple attempts or moments and use that evidence to provide more specific feedback for them.

For us as PE teachers, this helps us stay focused on a few students without getting overwhelmed trying to assess all the students at once.

For students, this gives them more specific and timely feedback that they can use as they continue with their learning throughout the class.

The key, of course, is making sure the assessment happens while students are active and the feedback comes while they still have a chance to use it and try again.

What This Could Look Like in PE

Imagine your PE class is working on creating space on offense in basketball. Before the practice activities and games begin, you choose five students, perhaps one of the teams, to focus your assessment on. You still scan the rest of the class to make sure students are on task, following the rules, and responding appropriately to anything that comes up, but these five students receive your focused assessment attention for how well they are creating space during both practice activities and gameplay.

Rather than relying on one or two moments, you can observe these students across multiple opportunities to apply the ways of creating space you have taught them. Once you have seen enough to identify a clear strength or something they can work on, you can share specific feedback, ideally connected to the success criteria already established. This could be a quick 30-second chat off to the side between attempts before the student gets back into the activity and tries again.

Because this happens while the practice activities and games are still underway, students have the opportunity to use that feedback and try again. From there, you can continue this assessment process with those same students as they stay in the activity or game and apply the feedback.

The Takeaway

When we try to assess all students in a PE class, we can feel pulled in too many directions and end up with only brief glimpses of what they can do. Focusing on a few students at a time changes that. It allows us to get a clearer picture of what those students can actually do. This makes assessment more manageable for us and gives us a better sense of the specific feedback that might help them improve. Students can then use that feedback and make adjustments as the assessment process continues, all while staying active.

Coming up Next Week

This week focused on narrowing who we assess more closely. Next week, we look at another way to create focused assessment opportunities while students remain active, and one of my favourites: using stations.

See you then.