Mel Hamada has taught physical education and health at International schools for many years and is currently an Administrator at the International School of Beijing. Mel has a passion for engaging with PE research and looking for ways to incorporate best practice into the PE curriculum and student experiences and sharing her reflections with others. You can find Mel at melhamada.com or on various social media @mjhamada
I have worked at the International School of Beijing (ISB) for seven years in both the Middle and High school departments. We use the curriculum from Ontario, Canada for alignment and assessment. For the past few years, I have been using a number of tools to try and unpack and make more sense of both the holistic program we offer our students in their journey through MS (3 years) and our HS (2 years) PE and Health. Our school runs a combined Grade 7-8 class, and students cycle through a Year A and B curriculum which has challenged us to consider breadth and depth.
In the PE Departments at ISB, we start the year with a focus on what our beliefs are as a group. This serves to ground us when we need to make challenging decisions or choices when prioritizing and selecting curriculum standards, cutting units, or creating assessments. Meaningful PE has opened a series of opportunities for us to consider what ties our curriculum together for our students. As we review units, re-write assessments, and discuss options for our student-choice units we are offered a menu of ways to discuss our learning outcomes beyond the skills and tactics and game choices.
Here is an example of how we use Meaningful PE to support our curricular decision-making. As we consider an invasion games unit, we look at the Ontario standards we must assess and then work backwards to discuss how we might group our students for social connections and differentiated opportunities in different activities. Next, we work within a pedagogical framework – for invasion games, we tend to use Game Sense. Then, we use the Meaningful PE framework. Meaningful PE offers a wonderful way to discuss a variety of important PE foci: big picture (how do we plan for challenge? Have we offered choice and ownership? How might we increase social connections and inclusion?), lesson-by-lesson planning and reflection (specific motor competency focus, focus on conflict-reducing discussions in our teams, polling students about what they found fun, specific pair/group decisions in activities, etc), and in the moment conversations (why isn’t this team functioning well? This game is easy for Person A, how might we change it up for them? Person B is having a rough day, is this the right team for them? Person C told me they found this fun last lesson, how do I replicate that for them today?)
Meaningful PE for our team has provided an ongoing dialogue about our Ontario standards, about the Game Sense (or other) framework, and what we believe is best for students at our school. Having the opportunity to talk about more than just the standards we must teach and assess has allowed us to really choose carefully what we want to focus our attention on with students. PE teachers are in a wonderful position to be teaching not just sport, but to teach students through sport about how to be their very best selves and how to be engaged community members in the service of their peers.
I have loved the opportunity to discuss MPE and bring it to the front of our department conversations. It has added so much depth to our work at ISB.
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