I'm a PE educator who is passionate about our field and supporting other PE teachers in their journey. After years of helping teachers and schools with assessment, grading, and student motivation in PE, I'm now finding new ways to connect and share ideas with educators worldwide. Join my newsletter to learn, grow, and connect with a community of PE teachers!
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One simple PE grading question changed our department
Published 10 days ago • 5 min read
Three Years of Talking, One Moment of Clarity
What finally moved a stalled PE program, and what it might mean for you.
Recently, we looked at grading in PE through the 4-part series, from determining a grade all the way back to the purpose of grading itself. Thank you to all for the messages, questions, and stories that were shared along the way. They made the experience of creating the series more than worthwhile and very eye opening for me.
As many of you shared your past and current experiences and challenges with grading in PE, I wanted to share a bit of my journey as well. More to the point, how a discussion about grading led to clarity on what was missing from our classes, how we fixed that, and what it meant for us as PE teachers.
Getting unstuck
For three years, I tried to shift our PE program.
I was the department head, and I believed in where we could go. We were a tight group. We had good conversations and meetings. We reviewed our strengths and our challenges, but there was something holding us back that we couldn't seem to get past.
It wasn't the attitude or mindset of the PE teachers. They cared deeply. They showed up, they engaged, and they wanted great things for their students. But every conversation seemed to end where it started.
If you've ever been part of a program like that, you know the feeling. It's not resistance. It's not apathy. It's a kind of quiet feeling of being stuck where everyone senses something is off, but nobody can quite point to it.
This was us until something unplanned happened.
The gradebook on the table
It was our early October meeting. Fine, but going nowhere. Then, a question about grading came up. I had been working on a draft gradebook, so I brought it out to refer to in the discussion.
This wasn't the kind of gradebook the other PE teachers were used to, the kind that listed the units they did with a series of scores under each heading. This gradebook was different.
What was different about it? It was organized around what students were learning, not the activities they were doing. No basketball category. No fitness testing column. Just what they were learning about.
The first draft of a PHE gradebook shared with my PHE department
At first, there was collective silence. To me, it made sense, but I started to question this as the seconds, which seemed like hours, stretched on and nobody said anything.
Then, the first question came. Then the second. Once the first two came out, the floodgates opened and the questions were hard to keep up with.
What am I looking at?
What does this mean?
What about the units we're teaching?
What about my fitness scores?
How do I grade this?
How do I explain this to students?
Will this change what we teach?
The last two questions gained the most attention. We dug into them over the next few months, tried new approaches, shared experiences, and came back together again.
Our discussions about grading highlighted what was missing from our PE classes, something we had not been able to name for the last three years: we were not focused on student learning.
The gradebooks were the key to this realization. They could tell you what units we did, but not what students were learning or how they were doing with it. We had also treated them as separate from our teaching, something we visited periodically to enter a score or form a report.
The draft gradebook changed this.
So that's where we started. We agreed that our gradebooks, and by way of them, the grades, would summarize student learning achievement. We organized our gradebooks, and eventually our units, by learning.
Sample PHE gradebook organized by units and accumulated marks.
The updated PHE gradebook organized by student learning and proficiency levels.
What changed for us as PE teachers
This is the part I most want to share with you, because the change reached far beyond our gradebooks.
Our teaching became clearer. We knew what we were teaching toward in every lesson, so there was far less winging it on the spot. Activities were chosen for a reason, not to fill time or keep students active.
Our assessment became clearer. We knew what to look for as students engaged in their learning, and we knew what to respond to, whether that was feedback to a student, support for a small group, or an adjustment to the lesson.
Our grading became more meaningful. Grades were grounded in evidence of student learning, so we could feel more confident in them and clearly explain them to students.
And our students became more engaged. They had a clearer picture of what they were learning and how they were doing with it, and that changed how they showed up.
We weren't left guessing anymore. Not about what to teach, not about what to look for, not about how our students were doing, and not about grades.
And that stuck feeling from three years of conversations? Gone.
We didn't need more convincing. We just needed to see it.
What followed
Once we got settled, the results extended beyond our own gym. For the next three years, our program received national recognition from PHE Canada as a Quality Physical Education program. By the third year, our school scored highest rating in the province, and teachers from other schools and provinces wanted to come and learn what we were doing.
The recognition was nice, but it was never the goal. It confirmed what we had come to know: when student learning sits at the centre of a PE program, everything built on top of it gets stronger.
Getting this kind of clarity can start with one person, and the summer is a pretty good time for that.
Why this topic in the summer
Speaking from experience, trying to get there during the school year is challenging. There's little room on an already full plate. Summertime is the one stretch of the year when you can look at your approaches with time and energy (well, at least more than you'll have during the school year).
One small thing to try
You don't need to do a complete overhaul this summer. Try this one step instead.
Pick one unit you are familiar with and would teach in the next school year. Then, try to finish this sentence:
Students are participating in (insert your unit of choice) to learn about…
Tip: write down your first response or two and then look to your PE curriculum documents. Which learning standard(s) or outcomes does it best align with?
If your answer comes out as an activity, that's okay. That's most of us on the first try. Keep going until the sentence describes something students are learning about, not just doing.
That one sentence starts to centre the learning in your unit, which will shape what you plan, what you look for, and what you teach.
It took my department three years and one key discussion to get there.
You can start with one sentence, sometime between now and when your school year begins.
Grading Clarity
More than 1,000 PE teachers from around the world signed up for the 4-part grading series, and the questions and stories shared made something clear: many of you want more.
So I'm developing a mini course on creating clarity for grading in PE. It will dive deeper into the approaches shared in the grading series, showcase new ones, and walk you through, step by step, how to put them into practice, so that grading is clearer and more meaningful for you and your students in PE.
Helping physical education teachers strengthen assessment practices to drive learning, boost engagement, and elevate their teaching.
I'm a PE educator who is passionate about our field and supporting other PE teachers in their journey. After years of helping teachers and schools with assessment, grading, and student motivation in PE, I'm now finding new ways to connect and share ideas with educators worldwide. Join my newsletter to learn, grow, and connect with a community of PE teachers!
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