Lessons learned from Lockdown PE

After filming 72 PE videos over the last year, here are some thoughts.

To paraphrase Admiral Ackbar in ‘Return of the Jedi’: “It’s a wrap”!

Our final PE video was filmed and edited last week: #72. We initially started by planning only nine when I first contacted Willand Primary School 50 weeks ago. None of us knew how traumatic and disruptive the next year would be.

For our last video I recruited some friends and colleagues from around the world. Each of whom coaches with a different style and manner but they all share a consistent message: we want to help the children get better.

Three lessons learned

1. Planning is essential: we decided to do 10-minute chunks around the 3 themes of movement, physical fitness and skills. This gave the framework from which we could expand. The teachers and pupils could then use those chunks as stand-alone sessions or as part of a bigger lesson.
2. Technology helps: a better camera, tripod, microphone and editing software meant that the videos in Lockdown 3 looked and sounded better than those first 9. Having captions and links broke up the boring sound of my voice. We could not have done this 10 years ago (on our budget).
3. It’s hard work overcoming the counting paradigm: We avoided giving simple tasks that are easy to count and record. We seemed to be alone in this endeavour as the curriculum and other NGB videos were obsessed with ‘getting a score’. Schools liked sharing one-minute, simplistic tasks such as catching a pair of socks as many times as possible in a minute and writing it down. This counted as a ‘PE lesson.’ UGH!

Our lessons were about exploration and discovery and implicit learning: things that require patience, diligence and good teaching!

Unfortunately, having been a home schooling parent this year, education seems to be very mechanistic in all areas. My son had to read a poem and do a comprehension quiz: he got 10/10 but had no idea what the poem was about. He read the questions first and then searched the poem for the answers.

This same, limited, approach is endemic within PE. Teachers want numbers and so reduce the learning and task difficulty accordingly: plank for 5 minutes anyone?

You can see the improvement in our loyal video subjects over the last year: the tasks and lessons inspired them to practise on their own, even if they were shy on camera. That has been the best thing for me.

Transforming PE for your pupils

As a result of this experience, and my collaboration with Andy Stone, I have organised a teachers’ CPD workshop called Post Pandemic PE: creating the resilient student.

You can learn how we developed our practical and systematic approach and adapt it for your school.

Thanks for reading and watching. Stay safe, stay healthy.