This is the second article in the four-part series Assessing Without Sacrificing Activity Time. In last week’s article, we looked at how focusing on a few students at a time can make it easier to gather useful information about their learning while students remain active.

This week, we look at how stations can create opportunities to assess most or all students in a PE class without sacrificing activity 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 assess them more closely, but it can be difficult to focus on what one group of students is doing while also keeping track of everything happening across the gym.

So how can you create the conditions to focus more closely on student learning without stopping the activity for everyone else?

Spreading Our Attention Too Thin

With so many students moving around in the gym, on the field, or in another PE environment, trying to assess everyone can split our attention in too many directions. We move from student to student, often catching only momentary impressions of what each one can do.

The time we spend observing an individual student’s learning might be only a few seconds before our attention shifts somewhere else. When that time is spread across an entire class, we don't get an accurate picture of what students can do or what can be done to help them improve.

It is easy to think that assessing more students means trying to observe more students at the same time. But those are two different things. We can assess most or all students during the same PE class without trying to assess them all at once.

The difference is in how we create opportunities to assess them. Rather than spreading our attention across the entire class, we can create conditions where small groups of students come to us at different points in the lesson while everyone else remains engaged in learning activities.

Creating Focus with Stations

One way to create these opportunities is through stations. Rather than trying to assess all students in the class at once, we can stay at one station and have small groups of students rotate through to us.

At the Teacher Station, we might reteach something, have students practice a skill while we observe, or have them engage in a related activity where they can demonstrate their learning. This gives us an opportunity to assess students more closely and provide timely feedback.

NOTE: One way to organize this is to divide the class into four teams or squads ahead of time. The teams rotate through the three stations at predetermined intervals (e.g., every five minutes) until each team has had a chance at each station. This ensures that every student rotates through the TEACHER STATION during the class, where the teacher can observe and provide feedback to one small group of students at a time.

The activities shown at each station are just examples. We can choose what makes the most sense for our students and what they are learning.

The Value of Stations

Making assessment more manageable is only part of the benefit. With fewer students to assess at a time, we can see how they are doing, provide feedback, and continue observing to see what they do with that feedback. This gives us a better sense of their ongoing progress rather than relying on brief observations as our attention moves around the class.

As each group rotates through the Teacher Station, we can observe and provide feedback to most or all students during a single class. At the same time, the rest of the students remain actively engaged in activities related to what they are learning.

For us as PE teachers, this gives us an opportunity to assess most or all students more closely and develop a deeper understanding of how the class is progressing in a single period.

For students, this means most or all can receive focused, personalized, and timely feedback they can use during the class.

What This Could Look Like in PE

For example, imagine we are in a basketball unit and have divided the class into four teams. At Station 1, Teams 1 and 2 could be playing a modified game of basketball, with students calling their own fouls and any extra players taking turns refereeing.

At Station 2, Team 3 could be practising chest passes, bounce passes, or another skill connected to what the class is learning.

At Station 3, the Teacher Station, Team 4 could take part in a small-sided activity where you could assess their ability to create space, or whatever else you might be focusing on in class. With only one team to assess at a time, you can observe each student more closely, provide personalized feedback, and give them another opportunity to apply that feedback before they rotate.

After the predetermined amount of time, the teams rotate to the next station, and the process continues until each team has been through the Teacher Station.

The Takeaway

We can choose to assess most or all students in a single PE class, but that does not mean we have to assess them all at the same time. By creating opportunities to work with smaller groups throughout the class, we can observe students more closely, provide personalized feedback, and still keep the other students actively participating in their learning.

Stations give us a practical way to do this without sacrificing activity time.

Coming up Next Week

This week focused on using stations to create opportunities to assess students more closely while the rest of the class remains active. Next week, we look at how students can be involved in the assessment process by providing feedback to one another during the activity, which could also work well at Station 2.

See you then.