TEACHING PHYSICAL EDUCATION AMIDST THE PANDEMIC

June Pearl D. Bais

The pandemic drastically changed the educational system we used to have. Teachers cope up with the different strategies that are suited for the different modalities that the Department of Education implemented during this this stricken time. Among all the subject areas affected, Physical Education was greatly affected in terms of its practices and assessment.

Instead of the usual practices in the subject area, teachers thought of various strategies in teaching concepts and fundamentals and in giving practical assessments to their learners. This article will provide and discuss different strategies used by different teachers in teaching Physical Education amidst pandemic.

Based on the article of Daum, Goad, and Killian (2021), the learners must be given their “voice and choice.” This means that providing students the opportunity to choose and select from options that will meet their interest, motivation, and needs. The following are ways for teachers to include choice in their classroom activities, such as:

Make physical activity meaningful. Allow the students to choose the physical activity that they want to do. For instance, if you are teaching about recreational activity, give your students the concepts and allow then to choose which recreational activity they want to focus and guide them towards the accomplishment of the performance task.

Use community asset mapping. Give the students the options and resources where they can do their activities in the community. With this, you are giving the students the freedom to choose a particular place they can do their activities (e.g., backyard, playground, parks, neighborhood).

Utilize Universal Design for Learning (UDL). One size doesn’t fit all. The UDL is a framework that allows you to create and design your goals, methods, materials, and assessment that can fit and adjusted to meet the individual needs of the students. Physical Education teachers should consider the utilization of UDL principles in providing and creating learning activities and assessment to the learners this time of pandemic.

Provide option for equipment and other modifications. Their choice matters. Aside from allowing them to choose the activity and the place they can use in making their performance task, you can also allow the students to choose their own equipment in doing such activity. This also allow them to be creative in creating their activities.

The aforementioned are only some of the techniques in providing meaningful and productive activities to our students amidst the pandemic. Remember, when providing the students choices, give them range of options to choose from so that they can easily relate to the activities. We are not yet sure how long will it take for the pandemic to totally be gone, but as an educator we can do something to provide learning experience more meaningful to our students.

The author

is Teacher

--oOo-

I at Angeles City National Trade School