Competency 3: Diverse Learners
Description of Competency:
A health and fitness teacher understands how individuals differ in their approaches to learning and creates appropriate instruction adapted to these differences.
Reflection Connection:
One of the fun aspects of teaching is the uniqueness of each lesson, on each day. With each grade band comes specific content that should be emphasized. This video is the foundation of a lesson that can be modified and applied to all grade levels. As is, this is a lesson on throwing at the elementary level. At the elementary level, the focal points of instruction include learning to accept feedback, take responsibility for one’s actions, working with others, learning rules, showing etiquette, and safety. As students progress into middle school, the teaching components are the same focus, but are more refined with developmentally appropriate learning moments. When students reach high school, relative emphasis is applied on those aforementioned skills, but the focal points of instruction are self-management, communication, and problem solving, as well as working with others. These skills, although necessary to some effect in each grade level band, provide natural scaffolding of foundational skills in the younger grade levels and become more precise and focused as students get older.
A couple of examples of elementary level content include following directions and working with partners to complete a designated task, focusing on personal behavior. At the middle school level, examples of content are focused on self-reflection through personal and social behavior. Tasks that include gameplay rather than skill development help students work through issues when they get into conflict over rules and discrepancies. At the high school level, examples of content are students who are expected to provide feedback to others and to prepare students to assume more personal and social responsibility to showcase their knowledge and learning. Teachers need to create explicit opportunities for students to learn about people’s differences because students will have multiple opportunities to work together throughout a unit and school year with people who may be different from them. By providing these learning opportunities to learn from one another and work through issues, students will be better prepared to handle life outside of school.