Self Directed Warm Ups

This year the students in Year 7 at Boort District School have all been issued with iPad Mini’s as part of a 2:1 device rollout. This basically means that students have the capacity to choose a device that best fits the situation at hand, rather than forcing a device to suit the learning intent.

This 2:1 experiment has been incredibly positive thus far, paving the way for an entirely new way to deliver content, assess and ultimately aid learning in all subject areas. Ultimately, this also includes my Physical Education classes, which have been given a rocket boost, making it possible to take things to entirely new levels. Here’s the first in a series of posts focused on exploring my students 2:1 situation.

Self Directed Warm Ups

One of the first ways in which I utilised the students 1:1 iPads in the PE classroom, was to help students facilitate a 100% self directed warm up. Here’s how it worked.

1.  The students downloaded the FREE app ‘SworkIt‘ prior to the PE Class

2. After the students have got changed and made their way into the gymnasium for the start of class, they grabbed their iPad and launched the Swork It app

3. They then got to choose between a ‘Cardio, Yoga, Strength or Stretching’ Focus, followed by a work out duration of 5 minutes.

4. The App then immediately generates a random workout centred around the focus they identified above. The students then find a place in the gymnasium as their ‘personal‘ trainer takes them through the workout filled with workout videos and key teaching points. See the app in action below;

For me the power of this activity was its ability to cater for the individual differences, desires and needs of the students in the group. Not to mention, that it served as an instant activity that they could completed as soon as they entered the classroom, meaning that as a group we didn’t need to wait until all students are were ready to get active.

In the next blog post, we’ll dive exactly into how I employed this same self directed approach to the actual teaching of skills and strategies in the practical session.

So how could you use the idea of a self directed warm up in your classroom? What other self directed approaches have you used to differentiate your sessions?

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