Welcome to Ready Set PE!

Welcome to the blog post of Ready Set P.E.!  I’m very excited to get the opportunity to collaborate and share with you.  I hope you will find my posts inspirational, helpful and useful to spark some creative ideas for your students and classrooms. As a P.E. teacher for over 30 years I have tried many approaches to get kids moving and having fun.  Without a doubt, I’m sure you can agree that kids move the most when they are engaged and having fun.  Most recently I have been focusing on movement games and activities that engage the whole body and brain.  My students love the challenge of incorporating math and critical thinking skills into our P.E. sessions.  Fitness would be so boring if the students just had to do plain old calisthenics each and every day.  So, why not make it fun and cross curricular?  I feel like the kids are so busy thinking that they forget they are actually exercising.  That is a win, win for me and the kids.

I know what you are thinking, this is not easy to do?  With practice and patience it truly is very easy to get your students up and moving with cross curricular games and activities.  The best part is many of these activities take little space, can be played inside or outside and make great brain breaks for active classrooms. One of my favorite activities to get my kids mentally and physically engaged from the start of class is the Daily Five Warm Up. 

The Daily Five is a fast warm up that asks the students a simple yes or no question.  After answering the students must complete the corresponding exercise based upon their answer.  For example, a basketball court is rectangular.  If the student answers false or no they must do 20 hops.  If the student answers true or yes they must do 20 jumping jacks.  Each day the class completes 5 simple questions.  The Daily Five is designed in 4 weekly/monthly units.

This resource is perfect for grades K-5 Elementary PE warm ups, distance learning and brain breaks for active classrooms.  This 44 weeks set of warm up activities is a no prep print and go activity that focuses on simple warm up exercises and answering yes and no questions that are fitness related, sport related, movement related, general PE trivia and Olympic trivia. Each section/unit consists of 4 weekly sets of questions and exercises for yes or no answer and a complete answer key. The theme of each unit includes: Back to School, Soccer, Volleyball, Basketball, Flag Football, Baseball, Floor Hockey, Bowling, Tennis, Move Your Body and Olympics.  I like this warm up because it tests general knowledge, covers common core PE standards, promotes higher order thinking and general knowledge checkpoints for me as a teacher and for extra practice for my students. 

The kids love the variety and cannot wait to see what questions are coming next week.  

http://eepurl.com/gvRWAn

To receive a free copy of the Daily 5 warm up please click the link above. 

There are many ways you can incorporate the Daily Five into your PE class.  You can do it as a warm up, closing activity, distance learning assignment, or a transition break in between activities.  I have tried many approaches to find the fastest and easiest way to include this in my daily lessons.  I have been most successful using this as a warm up activity at the beginning of the class. Based upon the reading levels of your students you can consider these approaches:

• Small Group Warm Up - A small group reads the questions together and then complete the task

• Paired Partner warm Up - Partners read the questions together and then complete the task.

• Student Leader - Student reads question to the class and then complete the task

• Teacher Led - Teacher reads the question to the class and then all students complete the task

• Class Led - Show on the projector and all students ready together and all students complete the task 

• Transition Time - As you transition to a new activity the teacher asks a new question.  For example after warm up question 1, after activity 1 ask question 2, cool down question 3……

 

 

Each Daily 5 prints nicely in black and white to a good quality color scale. If you have access to color printing the kids will love the pop of color. This print and go activity will soon be one of your favorites.

 

I started creating resources to help support teachers like myself who want  to help students explore new and exciting activities in the field of P.E.  I hope you enjoy this resource and I would love to have your feedback, suggestions for new products and any input you would love to share. Get up and Get Moving!

 

Have a Great Day,