Considerations for Lesson Planning
Location: Gymnasium
Strand: Active Living/Movement Competence
Topic: Active Participation/Movement Skills and Concepts
Students:
- Three female Muslim students who observe religious modesty standards, including wearing hijab and fasting during Ramadan. The students access the prayer room (as per their religious accommodation) directly before the class.
- Considerations:
- Account for preferred expressions of modesty in dress and activity for the female Muslim students, ensuring they feel respected, valued, and included in the lesson.
- Ensure that students who are observing Ramadan feel respected, valued, and included in the lesson.
- Considerations:
- One student who uses a wheelchair.
- Consideration: Ensure that the student using a wheelchair can participate in all activities.
Supports: None
Lesson: Targets Away
Lesson Overview
Students learn about and practise applying defensive and offensive strategies when trying to knock down other students’ targets while defending their own targets.
Overall and Specific Expectations
A1: A1.1; A2: A2.1; B1: B1.2; B2: B2.2
Learning Goals
We are learning to apply aim and accuracy to send an object to knock down targets while applying tactics to defend our target.
Materials
- 1 hula hoop per group
- 1 target per group (e.g., cone, pylon, bowling pin) large enough to be easily reached or placed at an appropriate height for accessibility
- 8–10 soft-skinned foam balls of various sizes
- Cones/pylons to mark the designated activity area
- Implements for defending a target (e.g., pool noodles, paddles, foam racquets)
Safety Requirements
Refer to the Ontario Physical Activity Safety Standards in Education.
Assessment for Learning
Use the Teacher Resource: Recordable Anecdotal Recording Chart to observe and provide verbal feedback of students’ ability to apply aim and accuracy to send an object to a target and apply tactics to defend a target.
Warm-Up
Students gradually increase their heart rate by participating in dynamic movement stretches.
- Create a dynamic movement circuit by selecting and displaying visual instruction cards around the activity area that illustrate various dynamic movements that can be performed from a seated or standing position (e.g., toe lifts, front punches, oblique crunches, elbow to knee).
- Have students work in pairs to rotate through the circuit to perform each movement for a designated length of time.
- Inform students that they can choose to perform the movement from a seated or standing position and determine the intensity with which they perform each movement.
- Encourage students to select alternate stretches they have learned to target specific body parts that feel tight and to perform them at their own pace.
- Allow sufficient time for transitions between stations to accommodate the varying abilities and needs of students.
Minds On
Share and clarify the lesson’s learning goals with students.
- Divide students into triads, considering intentional groupings based on needs, relationships, and peer support.
- Provide each triad with a soft-skinned foam ball, a hula hoop, and a target (e.g., cone, pylon, bowling pin large enough to be easily reached or placed at an appropriate height for accessibility).
- Designate an activity area away from walls or other obstacles, using cones/pylons to the mark the corners. Ensure there is sufficient space for all students to safely manoeuvre around the space.
- Instruct triads to set up their target in the centre of their hula hoop away from other groups and within the designated activity area. Triads establish a sending line at a distance determined by the group and may alter the distance at any point during the activity.
- Students take turns sending the ball to the target, attempting to hit it.
- Triads keep track of the number of times their group hits the target.
- Encourage teamwork and cooperation among students, with peers assisting each other with ball retrieval, as needed.
Using the following teacher prompt and a whole group discussion, encourage students to reflect on their success when sending objects toward a target.
Teacher Prompt: “How can you send your selected object so that it successfully reaches the target?”
Student response may include:
- “Vary the distance between you and the target.”
- “Send the object underhand or overhand depending on the distance.”
- “Keep your eye on the target and follow through to the target.”
Action
- Have students remain in their triad.
- Instruct groups to reset their hula hoop and target ensuring that it is at least 2 m from other students and within the designated activity area. Ensure there are wide and clear pathways throughout the activity area.
- Explain to students that their goal as a group is to hit as many targets as they can to amass points, 1 point per hit, while defending their target. Groups defend their target using body parts (e.g., arms, hands, feet) or implements (e.g., pool noodle, paddle, foam racquet).
- Group members may choose their roles and responsibilities in the game (e.g., defend their target, work together to retrieve and send balls to hit other targets).
- Groups start with one foot or wheelchair touching their hula hoop.
- On a predetermined start signal, groups work together to send their ball underhand to hit other groups’ target, while defending their target. Once groups send their ball, they may retrieve it or retrieve any other ball in the activity area. Remind groups to work as a team to assist each other with ball retrieval, as needed.
- Students must avoid entering into any other hula hoop while defending their target or attempting to hit other targets.
- Groups keep track of their scores and receive a point for every target hit. Remind students that if any target moves outside the hula hoop or is knocked over, they move it back to the centre of the hula hoop before continuing to play. Students must wait until a target has been repositioned before sending an object at the target.
- If a student hits another student with their ball or makes contact with them, their group loses a point.
- After the allotted time has elapsed, pause play and have triads regroup around their target.
- Using the following teacher prompts, encourage groups to reflect on their success and generate ideas of ways to increase their success:
- “Describe the tactics you are using to successfully defend your target from being hit. What would you do differently next time?”
- “Describe how you are you most successful in sending the ball to your group member or to the target.”
- “Describe how you work as a group to defend your target while hitting other targets? What strategy works well? What strategy might you change?”
- “Which games or sports have you played or know about that use similar rules and strategies to the ones used in this game?”
- Resume play, having triads apply the strategies they identified.
- After another period of play, have groups decide how they might change the game to enhance the fun, inclusion, and participation for everyone. Include the variations in additional rounds of play as time permits.
Cool Down
Students gradually decrease their heart rate by participating in a static stretching circuit.
- Create a static stretching circuit by selecting and displaying visual instruction cards around the activity area that illustrate various stretches that can be performed from a seated or standing position (e.g., overhead triceps stretch, shoulder shrugs, chest expansions, arm rotations).
- Have students remain in their triads, rotating through the circuit to perform each movement for a designated length of time.
- Remind students that they can choose to perform the movement from a seated or standing position and determine the intensity with which they perform each movement.
- Encourage students to perform stretches at their own pace.
- Allow sufficient time for transitions between stations to accommodate the varying abilities and needs of students.
Consolidation
Review the lesson’s learning goals with students. Using the Thumbs Up Strategy (consult Teaching Strategy Descriptions), have students assess their ability to send an object to a target and apply tactics to defend a target.
Ideas for Extension (optional)
- Change the object to send (e.g., beanbag, sponge, rubber disc).
- Use a variety of objects to hit the target, with each object worth a different point value (e.g., rubber disc = 3 points, large foam ball = 2 points, small foam ball = 1 point).
- Send the ball in various ways (e.g., non-dominant hand, overhand throw).
- Every group begins with a total of 10 points. A point is subtracted from their score whenever their target is hit.
CRRP and Disability-Centred Movement Strategies Embedded in the Lesson
Components of this lesson are designed to account for preferred expressions of modesty in dress and activity for the female Muslim students who observe religious modesty standards, ensuring they feel respected, valued, and included in the lesson.
- Activities are selected that respect the modesty and activity preferences for the female Muslim students, including activities that do not require physical contact.
- Various groupings and ways of participating are included as options (e.g., intentional grouping of students for comfort, and seated or low-impact exercises options).
Components of this lesson are designed to ensure that students who are observing Ramadan ensuring they feel respected, valued, and included in the lesson.
- Visual instruction cards are posted in the activity area and stations, allowing students to easily leave or return to the class based on their time and length of prayer and be integrated into the activity without needing additional instructions or having to wait until an activity ends.
- Activities are chosen that permit flexible groupings so as students return from prayer they can be integrated into the activities without a pause in play or needing to wait for a transition in the lesson. Groups can also be adjusted when students leave for prayer.
- Activities are designed with student energy requirements in mind, considering students’ potentially decreased energy levels, tiredness, and concentration during Ramadan (e.g., students determine their level of intensity during the warm-up and cool down and may choose less strenuous exercises, students may choose their role in the game to be more or less active).
Components of this lesson are designed to ensure that the student using a wheelchair can actively participate in all activities.
- Activities are selected that provide entry points for all students to participate, including those with disabilities.
- Clear boundaries and pathways are established to provide a space for wheelchairs and other mobility aids to have room to move safely.
- A variety of equipment and materials are chosen to be physically accessible and enable maximum participation (e.g., size of targets, various objects and options for sending, objects for defending the target).
- Rules are designed to ensure maximum participation and teamwork. Cooperation is highlighted, encouraging peers to assist each other with ball retrieval, as needed.
- Word choice when providing instruction is intentional to be inclusive of how all students move (e.g., using the word “enter” versus “step into any other hula hoop,” students “move” about the space versus “walk” or “run”).
- Through the use of teacher prompts and whole group discussion, the student has opportunities to share their personal experiences with games with which they are familiar that use similar skills. These experiences are integrated into the learning to be inclusive of all students’ diverse abilities and cultural backgrounds.