My TweetPost tweet this time sent me off to an interesting article on…no…see if you can guess what it’s about.
It was a “List” article. You know, where the author gives you a list of ideas they think are useful. I normally give up reading these articles because they tend to be vapor (i.e mainly aspirational with little or no grounding in a practical sense), but this one was not too bad.
Anyway, here’s the game. I’ll list the list items, and you try to identify the topic.
- Start out slowly
- Fun is paramount
- Play and they will come
- Creative positive incentives
- Get the students involved
- Keep it varied
- Change things up to maintain motivation
So what was the topic?
In this case it was a list of “Tips for Keeping our youth fit”, something that PE teachers worldwide do as their day to day work.
But something occurred to me. Many #pegeeks puzzle over implementing games based learning (GBL) into their classrooms, thinking that they have to learn a new way of teaching to carry it off. I’d argue that the list above not only applies to good practice in keeping kids fit, but also for good PE teaching and also more generally good classroom practice anyway. It also resonates for those planning to use GBL strategies with their students. Teaching games and movement in the physical sphere is core business for PE teachers, and I see a close relationship with what the “other” games based learning is all about. I say “other” because for some reason when most people think of GBL pedagogy, its mainly video games that get the most attention as the delivery platform for the experience.
I’ve recently been involved in work looking at the elements of GBL pedagogy, and concepts like persistence, challenge, investment, flow, reward and feedback are integral to effective GBL. Sounds a lot like the skill learning that takes place in PE classes too.
So #pegeeks, the next time you think about using a GBL layer in your teaching with your kids, realise that the elements to carry it off may just be the stuff you’ve been doing for years already.
Here’s the tweet. Thanks to @baldyr55 for bringing the article to my attention! Here’s the article
