News and note for Physical Education

With progress reports coming out this week I would like to take this time to get you up to speed with what you’ll be seeing from me. Over the summer I spent two weeks at the Seacoast Professional Development Center in the basement of the SAU 16 offices putting together a database for progress reports in Physical Education. This database allows me to create assessments following the SAU 16 Physical Education Curriculum that I can load onto a Palm Pilot or give in paper form. This database also generates a progress report for each quarter. The progress report is broken down into three areas; Movement Skills, Learning and Interpersonal Development, and Cognitive Understanding. Because of the new technology and getting the bugs out of everything I did not have a chance to assess very many of the movement skills. However, these should fill in over the course of the school year. You may even notice changes in the assessed level in each skill area. This is OK because in the movement skills area the skills themselves cover a large amount of sub skills. So many different assessable skills make up a movement skill. Does this mean you child is going to be assessed every second in Physical Education? Hardly, I’d go crazy and wouldn’t have any fun and neither would your child! I’ll be picking and choosing from the curriculum which skills I feel would make for a clear picture for everyone. Finally, a little bit on the wording on the progress reports. There are four generic levels of skill proficiency; Pre-control, Control, Utilization, and Proficiency. Below are the definitions for these terms. If you have any question on the progress reports I will be available during parent teacher conferences or for a conversation after or before school.

*Pre-Control (beginner) level is characterized by lack of ability to either consciously control or intentionally replicate a movement.

*Control (advanced beginner) level is characterized by less haphazard movements- the body appears to respond more accurately to the child’s intentions.

*Utilization (intermediate) level is characterized by increasingly automatic movements.

*Proficiency (advanced) is characterized by somewhat automatic movements that begin to seem effortless.

*Taken from “Children Moving A Reflective approach to Teaching Physical Education” George Graham, Mayfield Publishing Company 2001.