Money Stamps In Journals

During Strength days, you can earn money by completing different level of exercises. You must complete the following:

Crawfish Level = 10 Push-ups, 25 Sit ups, 3 laps = 10 ¢ (ten cents)

Fish Level = 25 Push-ups, 40 Sit ups, 5 laps = 25¢ (twenty five cents)

Shark Level = 40 Push-ups, 50 Sit ups, 6 laps = 50 ¢ (fifty cents)

During Agility days, you can earn money by your quality of work.

You must complete the following:

Math/language art problems must be answered and set up correctly the first time = $0.25 (twenty five cents)

Problem is set up correctly but not answered correctly the first time = $0.10 (ten cents)

Problem is not set up correctly or answered correctly the first time it is checked = $0.00

What can I buy with my money?

You can get the following:

$8.00 (eight dollars) free day at PE. A day with no journaling, no exercise with rest of class, choice of game.

Teaching About Numbers And Grouping

We continue to interweave numbers into our pe class. This week we counted our jumping jacks and other exercises. First we would count how many jumping jacks we performed. We would ask the question, "What are we counting?" The typical response was, "Numbers." We would then explain that we are counting the number of jumping jacks in a set. We gave the kids our explanation of what a set is and how we group our exercises. Then we would do another  "set". This time we would count by 2's or 5's. For example we would count up to 50 by 5's. We explained how this is using multiplication. Some examples of our questions we ask are, "How many jumping jacks did we just do?", "How many jumping jacks did we do in the first set?",  "Which set did we do more of?",  "Which set did we do less?"
We would manipulate how we counted. We would count forward and backward. We would count by 2's, 5's, 10's 100's. We would count forward and backward by those multiples.
Grouping is essential to pe. We group into lines to run relay races. We try and form even groups to move to different pe centers. We showed the students two different ways to group. We can use actual numbers or use estimation. We showed the students how to count off and divide into groups and explained we would this type of grouping if we are playing team sports so that the numbers will be fair. We also used estimation to get into groups that were somewhat even. We explained that estimation is a quick way for us to break into groups to move to centers of skill training. We explained that exact numbers weren't as important in the centers.

Using The Journal To Teach About Money

We will be using our PE journals to teach about money. Using money stamps we will reward the students' work with different denominations of money stamps. The students will then be able to "buy" different prizes. They will also be able to bid on prizes in an auction format. Effectively we will turn their journal into a checkbook.

Treasure Hunt

We have started hiding little "treasures" ie shark tickets, side walk chalk, etc. The students must then use the compass and meter wheel to find the treasures. The directions to the treasure are simple. Here is an example. Start on the southern tip of Texas. Go 180 degrees South for 50 meters. Then go 330 degrees north for 55 meters. We hide stuff under cones, under rocks, etc. The kids really seem to enjoy it. At the conclusion we will go over their course. I will show them how they traveled in a triangle. This is an introduction into vectors, trig. We will also start using gps systems this coming week.

Creating A Word Wall In PE

To go along with our writing in PE we have installed a white board and have begun making a word wall.

Using The 6+1 Writing Strategy In PE

For the past 2 weeks we have introduced a TAP writing strategy in PE that helps the students to understand about writing stories about their memories and experiences. In their journals they have been writing about the daily exercise regimen. All the sentences are relevant to the topic of their exercises. This week we had the students write about their favorite activity.. It could be from PE or somewhere else. We checked to see if the story stayed on topic and that all sentences were relevant and supported the main idea.

Making a Sundial Using a Basketball Goal

We have been discussing how time is used to measure in PE. To give the students a sense of how time can be measured using the sun we constructed a sundial using a basketball goal. Every hour we traced the shadow and labeled the mark with the hour. As we were making our marks we discussed that the marks would make 180 degrees. We discussed the pros and cons of using a sundial. We discussed how to make the sundial more effective. We also discussed how the sun moves across the sky in different seasons.