Strengthen Your PHYSICAL EDUCATION Program Using Station Teaching (Grades K-8)

by Carrie Flint

Friday, November 18, 2022 (Online)

Carrie Flint's seminar focused on different ways stations could be utilized to enhance your physical education program.

Some of the benefits of station work discussed included breaking the students into smaller groups to shrink the audience for which they must perform. This can be very beneficial, especially for new skill learners and those that are not as confident. It also gives teachers the ability to interact more easily with students, keeping others occupied during interactions. Station work allows for increased social interaction between students during skill work. Station work also cuts down on the amount of equipment needed for skill work. It also allows for easier assessment, as other students are occupied with their station partners.

There were many ideas and suggestions made to enhance your classes with station work.

One idea was to implement stations for the warm-up aspect of your class. This could include fitness stations, where students rotate to different cones labeled with different exercises. She also discussed fitness role, where students role dice to determine their next exercises at the station. Fitness card are also an option, where students select their exercises from a deck of cards. These warm-up stations were mentioned as a good way to get students socially interacting from the beginning of class.

Stations during the main section of class were also mentioned as a good option. This could include many different sport and movement skills. It was also mentioned that on assessment days you could have a second station where students have a skill they have already worked on extensively so less prompting is necessary.

Another suggestion which I liked was the idea of students doing 2 rotations through a station during class. The idea being students will feel more confidence the second time through the rotation and that could lead to enhanced learning.

An extensive part of her presentation included discussing the use of music to keep energy high and keep students moving during station work. She also mentioned using programmed music to signal students when to rotate, begin participating in the station, and clean up at the end of station work.

The biggest takeaways for me included the idea of a ball roll with classmates during fitness stations to determine workouts in a fun way, the idea of rotating through stations more than one time during a class period, having the warm-up be station work, and the idea of using different music to signal a variety of actions during stations.

Some of the concepts and ideas about station work could apply to the general classroom use, such as fitness brainbreak stations and music to signal a variety of actions in the classroom.