Hello friends!

This week I was unable to attend class, but after looking through the class slides, I am pretty excited to write about gamification.

I missed in class discussions surrounding gamification, but as a future PHE teacher, gamification means more inclusivity for my classroom. Gamifying PHE could look like so many different things:

  • I talked about it in my last reflection, but using virtual reality in PHE still allows for movement, but than can be adapted and made to be more engaging and visually appealing
  • I also touched on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) in my first ever blog, where we can take sport concepts and teach those through mini games. Instead of teaching soccer, I would have my students play a variety of ‘invasion’ games where the goal is similar to soccer: Invade an opponents territory with the goal to score a point. This way we can play a variety of games that are new to every student to level the playing field and students can still learn sport concepts but through games
  • Computer Games (Twine) to have students making game time decisions or concepts with a more visually appealing mode that may not require much physical movement, but that will still challenge students mentally

Gamified teaching really appeals to me as a future physical educator, because PHE does have many negative emotions connected to it. I want students to think of PHE as games, fun, movement and physical activity, instead of just ‘sports’. Gamifying the PHE classroom would be a great way to target and cater to the students who would normally not choose PHE, but should still be learning life long physical activity skills.

The student will be able to… Move through their opponents territory without being tagged, know how to create space for themselves to move through their opponents territory, and understand how each play benefits a game situation.

In Crossover, students will still learn common concepts from soccer/basketball/hockey: moving through an opponents zone and not being tagged or loosing possession and understanding how to make more space for themselves to get away from their opponents. This would be an entry level game, and does include builds/levels to start with students.

This would be a more advanced game to play with more complicated concepts relating to invasion games: transitioning from offense to defense and adjusting court positioning.

I think that PHE would be one of the more convenient domains to include gamified learning because of the curriculum and the gym/outdoor spaces, the opportunities to gamify PHE are endless.

Also, for anyone interested: https://www.thephysicaleducator.com/game-categories/invasion

This is the website to The Physical Educator, who has a lot of information on TGfU:

  • Sports are broken down into categories: invasion (soccer, basketball, hockey), net/wall (badminton/volleyball/tennis), striking/fielding (cricket, baseball), target, FMS, chasing fleeing…
  • There are also sample games/concepts with videos

I just absolutely love TGfU!

Until next time,

xoxo