Physical Education in a COVID-19 world: My view so far…
This academic year we welcomed back students to school here at EISB. We are lucky that we are able to do so as many schools all over the world still remain closed and working online.
While all teachers have various challenges teaching in this new modern world I do think PE teachers have an even tougher time to educate students. The guidance that has been issued is to keep PE outdoors for the current time. However the challenges I will face will inevitably be the changing weather. I currently feel very blessed that PE lessons are able to continue outdoors. We are also very lucky that we have enough space outdoors to do proper PE lessons.
However proper PE lessons mean limited equipment and limited contact within groups. With regards to equipment, who is responsible for ensuring the equipment is cleaned after every use? Will this responsibility fall to the teacher in charge who may have a class of pupils to manage also? I have decided to teach the students to disinfect any equipment that they use as I believe this is something they should know in this current world.
EISB usually offers External PE lessons for primary each term. However, because of the current restrictions we have had to pause the external trips. This means that the groups still get PE but it is currently being ran by me. I decided for the first week to do a circuit plan aimed at general fitness. The first hurdle I had to overcome was trying to keep the classes all separate from each other. This meant that the bigger classes were split up into smaller groups. Each group would then work at a particular station for 1 minute and 30 seconds before changing to the next station. The next hurdle I had to overcome was limited equipment for exercises. Nevertheless, I was so pleased with how hard each class worked.
Whatever the future holds, it seems clear that COVID-19 could have a long-lasting negative effect on our children’s physical education unless we find new inventive ways to keep them active.
