Teaching Perseverance and Honesty in PE [Interactive]

ClassActivity MiddleSchool JumpRope 276

[0:02] Character education is important. How do we add bits of character education into our days without compromising activity time?

[0:41] I recently taught a lesson in perseverance or grit and honesty using physical challenge. We began the class by defining perseverance or grit and honesty. Students had a discussion with me about what they thought it meant and how they thought we would see it in our lesson for the day.

[1:00] Then we connected the traits to our activity. Our challenges included climbing the rope, jump rope, pogo stick, ball transfer, and the noodle flipping catch. For more information specifically about those challenges, feel free to reach out.

[1:17] It was evident that perseverance was needed to complete the challenges for our students. It was really cool to see how some students worked so hard during this time, even students who don’t always show that grit. I see a lot of students that give up fairly easy, but in this lesson it seemed like students worked harder at a specific challenge. For example, some students stayed on those pogo sticks, the whole class, which I told them was fine, they maybe didn’t complete any challenge, but they worked and worked and worked to try to get that pogo stick, which is what we want them to do. We want them to keep trying even when it’s hard for them.

[1:59] Honesty came in the lesson when students were asked to verify the challenge for someone else. The idea was that they would watch someone and then sign their name on the other person’s sheet if they saw them do the challenge and they did it correctly.

[2:16] I made it clear that if your signature was on the paper you were responsible that the challenge was done correctly and completely. At the end of class we debriefed and reinforced the traits of perseverance and honesty.

[2:33] I really like how this lesson fit in. We were able to continue with physical activity but the students really got something out of it. I really felt that they understood perseverance and honesty at the end of the lesson, and I think we were able to discuss, have a good discussion, about how those traits fit in with our physical activity today.

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