Initial Thoughts for 2018

After a couple of weeks in to the new year, I started to ponder about the lack of engagement with my Year 11 Physical Education class. I could see that these particular students had chosen Physical Education as an option because of the perceived idea that it was purely practical. However, after a couple of weeks students started to realise that this course also had a theoretical component to it. Due to the perceived idea that Physical Education was a practical subject, I quickly noticed the lack of engagement from majority of the class. At this stage I could not pinpoint where this behaviour had come from, but I could only assume that this is seen as normal for a lot of these students. With this bunch of students, my initial thoughts were that I was going to be in for a challenging year.

As a reflective teacher I had to try and think of ideas to help engage these students. While their behaviour was not difficult, it was the fact that they were disengaged and not motivated to attempt completing set tasks. At this stage of the year this particular group of students very much had the mindset of Year 10's. I had to adapt my original planning and structure more rigid lessons to help motivate this group. The focus was on shifting their mindset to 'learning' because this was ultimately going to help them with their achievement. Focusing on how to learn was important in the first few weeks of the year so I could engage these students. One thing that I did regularly was a group reflection activity, where students had to share to the group what they had learnt and what they still need to improve on. This activity helped set the scene for the year and hopefully will help student realise that they need to know how to learn in order to achieve.