I believe that physical education is the best way for me to make an impact as a teacher because of my strong athletic background and the issues that I observed in the classroom setting, that require areas of improvement. I have the desire to see all students reach their full potential in all aspects and provide opportunities for them that I was not able to have access to. A lot of students can be impacted through sports and physical education because numerous life skills are taught in these settings. Furthermore, I plan to use my strengths that I developed from my school and work experiences to appeal to all students.
To teach physical education means to teach students the benefits of physical activity and the correct way to exercise. Through this it gives youth the chance to safely participate in PE. The more knowledge a student has about being physically active, the more likely they are to be physically active. That is why it is important for students to gain this knowledge such as the concepts, principles, and strategies that are associated with an active lifestyle.
Role of Student
In my curriculum I would make sure students are divided into groups in their classes in which they will share with one another all of their experiences related to the energy balance curriculum. Students will get an understanding of what the group is knowledgeable in energy intake, physical activity, obesity and energy. These can be based on real life experiences such as athletics, meal prepping, coaching, or any type of training. This will help students assume their initial positions in the project.
Multiple perspectives is the aspect of the curriculum where the best methods will be formulated based on their perspectives as well as experts’ perspectives. Guest speakers from each profession will be implemented for students to get real world perspectives. They will get perspectives from coaches, nutritionists, athletes, and trainers to formulate methods and compare their views of the problems as well as solutions. Everything is demonstrated to the students by way of the experts.
Once enough research is done and ideas are gathered for each role students try them out to see the effectiveness. Before assessment and competition, checking the mettle gives students the opportunity to utilize their procedures and get feedback from teachers and experts. Going public will give the students the chance to demonstrate health related fitness methods and advocating for them. This is also the aspect where skills and knowledge will be assessed.
Students will then have the opportunity to reflect on the activities they did and see how they can connect them in their life moving forward outside of school. My curriculum is coherent because the standards of learning that are going to be covered across the grade level are structured for the students to learn skills that will gradually prepare them for more complex higher level work with the same foundation.
Purpose of Curriculum
I chose to adopt a reconstructionist curriculum because I feel that it is necessary for students to be fully prepared for the real world. Students should know how to bring change and transition to their lives. In this curriculum not only do I want students to evaluate problems but also take action to bring change. I want the students to engage in critical analysis of the surrounding environment locally and globally. Students should be educated on how to resolve injustices and inequalities in society. I want students to understand the implications of their actions. The actions that students take will be based on their objectives, and through the guidance of the teacher they can make a plan of action. Improvement of society is one of the main goals of this curriculum.
My curriculum will be based off of fitness and wellness education to progress students through the energy balance curriculum. There will be a sport taught education education aspect intertwined in the curriculum. My metaphor for my curriculum is the Olympics where friendly competition is used to achieve the best understanding of energy balance. In this curriculum physical activity, obesity, energy expenditure, and energy intake will be the contents.
To integrate other subjects’ roles apart from the total athletic experience will be included (science, math, history). Each class will be broken split up into teams and represent a different role and a different country of the Olympics. Each quarter a new sport will be mastered as well as the full athletic and health related experience. Knowledge will be tested through research projects, e sports simulation, and competitions. The sports that will be played are basketball, track, soccer, and volleyball. Students will get to pick a country to represent and learn a piece of history about it.
Instructional Methods
Based on my research, the child centered curriculum design seems the most beneficial which is why this will be the design of my curriculum. I want the interests and experiences of the students to become the subject matter of the curriculum. This goal would be to help students connect the things they learn to their daily lives.
A 2014 study found that under-served children succeed more in a child centered curriculum. A 2015 comprehensive analysis of the design also found that it improved the relationship between students and teachers and increased academic achievement. A 2012 study paired the design to better social skills as well (WCES 2012). Students learn the most by doing and have the highest engagement when they are active.
Project based learning is the most effective when teachers, students, parties from the communities collaborate in order to accomplish goals and objectives of the curriculum. Expertise should be accessible outside of the classroom environment. That is why I adopted the Learning Cycle of Star Legacy (Schwartz et al., 1999) instructional model. This model combines the four types of learning environments to achieve the highest learning ( learner, knowledge, assessment,and community). Flexibility is supported. I have utilized this in my lesson plans.
Content
Based on research, there is a linkage between PA (physical activity) knowledge and behavior in youth. It is assumed that students who are aware of the benefits of PA and the correct way to exercise gives youth the chance to safely participate in PA. “ Thompson and Hannon (2012) proved this point by reporting a significant positive moderate association (N = 168; r = .438, p < .001) between fitness knowledge and PA level among students who received the Fitness for Life curriculum.”
These results state that the more knowledge a student has with PA, the more likely they are to be physically active, which is why it is important for students to gain this knowledge such as concepts, principles, and strategies that make an active lifestyle. While there was one study that failed to possess a significance between fitness knowledge and after school physical activity level, fitness knowledge and motivation variables were present for some variances in after school PA.
There is also research that the knowledge of proper nutrition can benefit behaviors in diet. “That is, a majority of the existing studies (65.5%) reported a significant, positive, weak to moderate (r < 0.50) association between nutrition knowledge and dietary intake (e.g. higher intake of fruit and vegetables) (Spronk et al., 2014).” Knowing nutrition facts and having literacy such as being able to choose healthier food options and interpreting labels are improved. Being knowledgeable about changing habits has more influence on choices and behaviors. There was a study on kindergarten children that displayed a positive correlation with nutrition knowledge and healthier food preferences, and proves the importance of nutrition in order to make the right decisions.
Keating et al. (2009) found that children in K-16 PE programs do not have enough knowledge about health related fitness. This is also found in other studies (Brusseau et al., 2011; Ennis, 2007; Placek et al., 2001). Additionally, Brusseau et al. (2011) showed that Pima children (third, fourth, and fifth grades; N = 262) did not have much understanding of PA and concepts of healthy behavior. There is also qualitative data that reported middle school students thinking that physically “looking good” or being considered thin correlates with good fitness, Placek et al. (2001) .
Pasco and Ennis (2015a, 2015b) found that third-grade students (N = 45) had their own model of energy expenditure based on what they feel to be true, which suggests the need for more coherence so that they are taught the scientific knowledge. With more effort to educate students it can increase their chances to engage in lifetime PA (Keating et al., 2009).
Chen and Chen (2014) found that most of the adolescents (83%; N = 195) in ninth grade (∼15 years old) were not able to correctly categorize and connect the main EB concepts: calories, EB, energy intake, energy expenditure, food, beverage, obesity, weight increase, weight loss, fat, PE, PA, physical inactivity, metabolism, carbohydrate, and protein. Knowledge inadequacy is not limited to just youth but parents as well.
I agree that a concept based PE curriculum would enhance the students healthy living knowledge in healthy living knowledge in an active and personally meaningful aspect. This is emphasized through the individual constructivist learning theory. An example of a concept- based PE program is the Science, PE, and Me curriculum (Ennis and Lindsay, 2008). In this nine unit spiral curriculum, students are involved with movement tasks and must solve cognitive problems targeted at constructing knowledge about health related physical fitness. The results show that students in the experimental group learned more knowledge about health related fitness than the students in the control group.
Adopting a spiral curriculum continuity is prevalent because concepts are introduced on a simple level in the early grades, then revisited with more and more complexity and application later on (Bruner, 1960). Vertical organization also arranges content so that it builds on each other. This indicates what students have learned and what they will learn later aligning with the general sequence of cognitive development.
We see this through the scope and sequence of this energy balance curriculum. Calories/energy intake, physical activity, obesity and energy expenditure are the components of the energy balance curriculum. The calories and energy intake component has learning experiments that are learning experiences repeated throughout the teaching of this at increasing levels of complexity and abstraction of meal planning.
The physical activity component has increasing levels of complexity and abstraction of fitness planning and health related fitness. The obesity component has increased depth and complexity through experiences in explaining the role of energy balance in weight management and body composition. The energy expenditure component ensures the reappearance of the rate of perceived exertion, identifying associated activity levels and RPE scales with increased complexity through the curriculum. e
