Integration across multiple subject areas

Physical Education

When teachers give students a voice, they are empowered and primed for success. According to Holdsworth (1998), giving students a voice means much more than consulting them and letting them speak. Students need to be made to feel they are valued. They need to feel appreciated and as though they make a difference in the community to which they belong.

Three levels have been identified within physical education at which students can have a voice. The highest level is curriculum, in which students have a say about the course content over the semester and/or school year. Obviously, students' opinions must be reasonable, as the curriculum must satisfy state standards. It may be more realistic to involve students in Level 2, project-based learning, where students design their own projects and assess their own process and performance. Easiest for the teacher to implement is Level 3, in which students make decisions within selected units.

The first factor in having a voice involves self-determination and an individual's three basic needs: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The second factor involves letting students make choices but, because their experience is often limited, they may not fully recognize all their options. In other words, they don't know what they don't know. Facilitating the decision process in this case helps students develop valuable skills they can use in other aspects of school and in life.

"Taking Personal and Social Responsibility" (Hellison, 1995) is a program that aims to teach responsibility through physical activity. The series of goal levels are approached with strategies including awareness talks, group meetings, opportunities for individual decision-making, and counseling and reflection times. A quality aerobic fitness program can meet the goals of this model. The program can improve physical fitness and can be modified for students with disabilities.

1. Physical Education can be integrated with other subject areas in a variety of ways. For young children, movement can be incorporated with music. Movement can be used as part of the morning meeting routine and for kinesthetic learning in drills for sight words and math facts. Some teachers use movement as part of behavior modification programs. Brain Gym, for example, is a trademarked program with prescribed movements that get students to cross the midline of their bodies. This movement is supposed to stimulate the brain and help students to focus. Some teachers incorporate yoga into their classrooms to help students get calm and centered. Other teachers may incorporate short "brain breaks," in which students take a few minutes to stand and stretch, do jumping jacks, or perform toe-touches before returning to their seatwork. As students get older, they study the human body in science classes, learning about anatomy, physiology, and healthy habits. Creative teachers in all content areas can think of ways to get their students moving in the context of the lessons they teacher.

2. The movement towards standards-based education has necessitated the creation of valid and reliable assessments that teachers can use to measure student progress toward achievement of the standards (Dyson, Placek, Graber, Fisette, Rink, Zhu, Avery, Franke, Fox, Raynes and Park, 2011). It is no different with physical education. The national physical education standards were designed to represent appropriate learning outcomes for K-12 programs. In kindergarten, for example, children learn and explore new ways to move and be active. As students progress through the grade levels, they develop more mature forms of manipulative, locomotor and non-locomotor activities.