How to create Physical Education lesson plans based on the Progressions of Learning
In the Physical Education Methods class I followed during the 2014 Winter semester, I learned how to create Physical Education lesson plans based on the POLs (Progressions of Learning). It is an approach that is based on the said POLs, which are then reflected through the games we build around them. Here is a step by step guide on how to create a proper Physical Education lesson plan:
1. Use the same template for every lesson plan. Here are examples of lesson plans I created for my Peer Teaching Binder during the previously mentionned class jarry_francois_lessonplan2 jarry_francois_lessonplan3jarry_francois_lessonplan4. You can save them and use them as a template by simply typing over the information that must be changed and keeping the rest or you can also create your own prettier template based on this one’s overall structure.
2. Choose which competency the lesson will focus on. If it’s Competency 1: To perform movement skills in different physical activity settings, the lesson should focus on more individual activities like mimicking. If it’s Competency 2: To interact with others in different physical activity settings, it should be based more on team or duelling activities such as voleyball or different tag variations.
3. Within the Progressions of Learning Elementary document, find one progression for each category (Knowledge, Motor Skills, Strategies, Behaviours). If the lesson focuses on C1, then only find a progression for each Knowledge and Motor Skills category. It is possible to use multiple POLs per category but usually, it is recommended to focus on only one per category per lesson. Keep in mind that you will have to use or create activities that focus on these POLs so don’t pick some that are totally unrelated and couldn’t be used in a game or activity. If you want to create a lesson plan for Secondary students, you will have to use the Progressions of Learning Secondary document, which I was unable to find on the internet.
4. Once your POLs have all been selected, you have to write the student objectives, which are highly related to the POLs. These represent what you should see concretely from the students during the lesson. The easiest way is to simply copy the corresponding POLs and adapt them to the sentence. The Psychomotor aspect corresponds with Motor Skills; Cognitive with Knowledge or Strategies; and Affective with Behaviour (if working with C1, find a behaviour you would like your students to adopt like showing appreciation for their peers’ actions for example). If you’re feeling creative, you don’t have to copy the POLs, but the ideas you come up with should be related to the POLs the students should be working on.
5. For each lesson, you must come up with one Individual Professional Teaching Objective. That is an aspect of your teaching you really want to work on during this lesson. For example, if I know I had problems communicating instructions clearly to the students for the past lesson, I would write that my objective is to always speak in a loud enough voice and use demonstrations when giving instructions.
6. You can now decide what the focus of the lesson will be and design its schedule. In the Introduction, the focus of the lesson should be explained and it is good to provide them with cues, either through discussion or direct instruction. For the Warm-Up, choose an activity that will prepare the students for the actual Main Activity, which should make the students practice the selected POLs. Finally, for the Cooldown, find an activity that will make the students review what they learned during the lesson. It can be as simple as forming a circle and asking students what they have learned today, or can be slightly more complex like making them form groups and asking each group to demonstrate some or many things they learned during the lesson.
7. Once you have taught the lesson, you should reflect on it by hand-writing Post Lesson Comments. You should ask yourself 3 questions when writing them: “What went well?”, What did not go well?” and “What should I change to improve my teaching in the future?”. Think about whether or not you fullfilled your Individual Professional Teaching Objective. It is also recommended to write directly on the lesson plan for changes that should be brought to it in the future. For example, if the students got bored after 3 minutes of an activity that lasted 10 minutes, write it down directly on it and also write the changes you would bring to solve that problem, like adding more progressions to it.
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