5 PE Games That Need a Makeover

Welcome PE Nation!

Today I want to explore five traditional PE games that need makeovers to increase student engagement, maximize participation, and ensure all students benefit regardless of athletic ability.

• Tic-Tac-Toe relay and other relay races need smaller groups of 3-4 students to prevent excessive standing around
• Hula Hoop Rock-Paper-Scissors games should include multiple pathways with fewer students per team
• Full-class team sports should be replaced with small-sided games (4-6 players) and modified rules
• Dodgeball raises concerns about targeting students, creating fear, and elimination - consider games with non-human targets instead
• Elimination games should be modified to quickly return students to play or completely remove the elimination aspect

Take care,

Dave

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5 Games that need a PE Makeover article

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Chapters

• 0:11 Welcome and Introduction
• 2:42 Five Games Needing Makeovers
• 4:52 Tic-Tac-Toe Relay Modifications
• 6:59 Hula Hoop Rock Paper Scissors
• 8:58 Full Class Team Sports Issues
• 12:34 The Dodgeball Debate
• 18:09 Elimination Games Concerns
• 22:28 Cowbell Tip of the Day

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Supersize Fizzhead podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about five PE games that kind of need a makeover. They need some little modifications here, I think. So let's get going Without further ado. Here we go. All right, welcome in my friends from PE Nation.

Speaker 1: 0:41

First, I do want to talk about something I don't talk about really ever, just as I'm looking at the stats. I'm not trying to brag, I'm trying to thank everybody. So my podcast has been listened to in almost 100 countries, which is just crazy really. And yes, united States is the top country, but I'm in every continent, I think for Antarctica. And again, this is not to brag, this is to thank you, because sometimes I don't just stop and say you know, thank you and tell you who I am. Again, if you don't know me, I live in Florida. It's right off the Gulf of Mexico, it is. I live in Fort Myers, florida, not too far from Fort Myers Beach, and I teach in Estero, florida, which is not too far from there, a little south. So that's more about me. I'm from Buffalo, new York, so I'm always rooting for the Bills. And again, if you live in another country or anywhere else, again, I thank you and it just blows me away. People from nearby and far away listen to the show, so you know. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you, and if you want to be a guest on the show, please sign up. I will put the link in the show notes. And again, I don't do a lot of interviews, or haven't done a lot of interviews lately, but I'd like to get back into that as we go. So if you want to share your story, share your program, share anything about yourself, I would love to hear it, especially if you could bring anything, even one idea, to our PE community. That would be worth it. So again, thank you for that and let's get moving here. And, by the way, my dog is eating in the background. My dog's name is Peppermint I guess I never said that. We call her Peppy and she's a Shippu, a toy poodle shih tzu mix. She's very cute, she's mostly white and she's tiny. She's like 10 pounds, 11 pounds. So if you hear her eating in the background, I apologize. Okay, let's go on. So today, again, I want to talk about five games that might need a makeover At least I consider makeover for PE to make them better, to modify them to reach more students' needs and to get more kids active and learning.

Speaker 1: 2:58

So a little bit about when I grew up. I grew up in the 80s, as far as I mean, I was born in the seventies, but I really grew up in the eighties. And back then, you know, it was gym class. It wasn't even called PE class, it was like gym class and my parents still call it gym class and some people still do, which is okay, but I don't even have a gym. So definitely not gym class.

Speaker 1: 3:19

So, and you know, back then we, especially in middle school and high school, we defined teams by shirts and skins. We actually had to take off our shirts, guys, and it was mortifying really. It was not great, it was actually terrible, and especially if you were self-conscious or whatever. They're just bad stuff back then. Right, but it was how it was. In my memory, we played dodgeball pretty much every day Now we'll talk about dodgeball in just a little bit and I know dodgeball is one of those topics that can go either way and people are really passionate either way, which we'll talk about in a moment and teams were chosen by captains.

Speaker 1: 3:57

They kept picking until the last kid wanted to cry. Basically it was just bad memories for some people, right? We actually in middle school and I believe in high school, we, like, we took showers in front of each other, so there's no privacy. It was just different, right. And so you know, times have changed, thankfully. My dad told us one time and we're dying laughing that they had to swim naked with each other. The boys swim naked with each other. The boys swam naked with each other. The girls had some kind of bathing suit thing there, but it was all about sterilization and chlorine and I don't know what it was. But you know, thankfully times have changed, right.

Speaker 1: 4:36

But you know, I think there's some games that really could use a makeover. As times change, we need to change and innovate with these games. So here are five games that need a makeover. So here's a boomer. Here we go.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So the first one is that tic-tac-toe relay, and I love tic-tac-toe. I mean, who doesn't love tic-tac-toe, right? And in this game if you haven't seen it, I think most of you probably have students take turns running down the court and there's a tic-tac-toe board or hoops on the ground and kids run down and put a jersey in the hoops, one at a time and try to get three in a row, that kind of deal. So you know, this goes along with really any relay race. It should be fun and fast and active, and it is. Except when I'm looking at these videos people post, it's like two kids are running and 10 kids are watching and cheering, and so again, this goes with any relay race. There should not be 10 kids just standing around doing nothing at a time, I mean. So you know, that's what I see when I see these videos, and again it applies to any relay race, let's. And again it applies to any relay race, let's.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Let's change this so that it is less per group, right, and the games that I play, where it's kind of a relay, where kids are kind of trying to get like quote-unquote treasure or something like that in hockey, basketball, whatever, I try to have groups of like at the most four or maybe five if it's K through one, k through two, maybe especially kindergarten, because they get tired really fast and we're outside in the heat. So I'd say four or five per group at the most. But with the younger sorry, the older students I mean, I make groups of like two or three. I'd say three is the sweet spot, three to four, I guess, but it depends on the grade level and how many kids you have and that whole deal. But try to keep these short, right, these teams shorter. And so how to modify this game is just create extra games, right.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Create, instead of one game where a whole class is playing one game, make multiple games 10 kids on each team on red and blue or whatever, have three boards set up and have, you know, four kids on each team. And so I mean, really it's less cheering and standing around and more movement. So that's really for tic-tac-toe relay. That's what I want to see, and that's number one, all right. Number two is that Hulu hoop, rock paper scissors and again, I'm always looking for good rock paper scissors games so this game took like the internet by storm in I don't know nine, not even nine, 10, 10 years ago, probably like seven or eight years ago. So students are hopping and there's different levels of hoops everywhere there's like paths of hoops, everywhere there's like paths.

Speaker 1: 7:23

And what I've seen was, when I first seen this, I'm like am I the only one that sees two people moving and 10 kids, actually 20 kids cheering? And because everybody's like oh, online they're like oh, this is a great game. It's a great game, it's awesome. I want to play it tomorrow. But there was again. It's just like the tic-tac-toe. There was very little movement from other students. So in this game, two people from opposite ends of the gym or whatever the courts, they hop towards each other and they do rock paper scissors. Whoever wins keeps hopping and then the next person in that line tries to catch them. Of the, I want to call it the losing team, so that person goes down the line if they lose and a new person comes out and the goal is to make it all the way across.

Speaker 1: 8:04

And I haven't had parents and even my principal reach out to me like, hey, will you play this game? And I'm like, no, I mean really. I was like, well, let me modify it. So the way obviously and I've seen people modify this the way to modify it is to add more pathways, less kids. It's just like the last game less kids standing around cheering and more kids moving. So again, I did that one time I think I played it during a field day, and that's what we did. We modified it with multiple pathways, again, four or five per path, and they had to meet each other either separate games or just separate paths, and they could all meet up. So that's a good way to modify the game. Again, it's just like the first one, just any relay race really just needs to be more kids moving, less kids standing around, and that's number two.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Number three is full class team sports, and this is one of the reasons why I left my former school. My principal wanted me to teach more team sports and less, you know, skill based fun games where more kids have the ball, whatever object. And it was just, you know, not to her standards, which is kind of funny because she's not a PE teacher and she never was. So, yes, I'm kind of bitter, but anyways, that's one of the reasons why I left the school, because that's what she wanted to see more of. And I know and I teach elementary school, yes, middle school, definitely. More team sports, okay, high school again, I don't teach high school, I don't teach middle school, high school some team sports, and then, you know, some individualized pursuits, right? So, again, team sports are great, except what I see a lot of is 11-on-11 soccer or baseball or football or hockey, kickball, where there's just huge groups.

Speaker 1: 9:51

This goes back to the standing around, right, I mean, I guess you see a theme here. There's a lot of kids standing around and not a lot of kids getting the ball or just being involved, and the kids that play travel soccer. Let's just stick with soccer. The kids that play travel soccer, they don't pass to the other kids that don't play travel soccer, or the kids they don't think are as good as the other, you know, skill wise, and they, they're ball hogs, right, they don't get, they don't pass the ball to anybody. And then you know, the other kids get very little exercise, they get very little skill development, and this goes for any game, right, that I'm talking about of these team sports.

Speaker 1: 10:26

So the way to modify it is the small-sided games. This means teams of four to six, depending on the game space. Objective we want to get students more touches on the ball and work on basic skills. So let me go back to soccer for a moment. So this should be again small-sided games, should be four to five or maybe six per team. Smaller fields modify the rules. So maybe everybody has to touch the ball before there's an attempt to score, or the person who scores. You know, maybe they can't be the next person who scores, they have to set up the next goal, and you can do that in hockey and football and anything really, but something where it's smaller games and there's modified rules, things like that, where it can't just be the same person scoring over and over again. You know, we even do that in Capture the Flag, where, if we see the same kids scoring all the time, a lot of times we play Capture football where there's only one fault, one football and you know, on each side so they can only score like twice, so they have to help set up or play defense, something like that. So any of these games where you see kids ball hogging or you know, you know I'd go over. You know.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Talk about famous athletes. You know, to me wayne gretzky. I don't think there's any debate that he's the goat, right, he's the best in hockey ever. I know Ovechkin just broke his goals record, but Gretzky has more assists than anybody by far and that's why he has more points by anybody, you know, compared to anybody, and that's not gonna be broken. He just has so many assists it's unreal. So he's setting up people to score and that's one of the reasons what made him great. So, you know, talk about that with your students, but definitely modify these team sports, make them smaller, make them more accessible to the kids that aren't, as you know, they're not travel soccer players, they're not travel hockey players or whatever Involve everybody. And that's what's going to make team sports better, these small-sided games.

Speaker 1: 12:28

And that's number three, all right. Number four is dodgeball, and yes, I know this is one of those debates that's going to go on forever. So, first of all, if you're in a different country, I know you might have a different set of rules or regulations and you know, again, I'm not. If you play dodgeball, you don't have to. I used to do this. Actually, I used to hide that I was playing dodgeball, like for a while, because I don't want people to judge me. So I don't judge anybody who plays dodgeball. I just try to give you a side of the debate. I guess against dodgeball. So again, I loved dodgeball as a kid. I've said this a few times, but I remember I'm not. I mean, really, this is what I remember At a fourth grade, like sleepover camp it was for like I don't know, a few days or a week.

Speaker 1: 13:15

We played, we had this dodgeball tournament and I was the, and these were the kickball, like the red rubber rubber balls, the ones in the movie dodgeball. They were thrown at me by this aggressive adult, really, and I remember catching the ball. He whipped at me and our team won the championship. Because of it and in my mind, my fourth grade mind I still remember being carried off the field, people cheering for me. I'm just kidding, that's not what happened, but it was exciting, right, and you know that was the eighties. That's when I grew up. Right, I said that already. I grew up in the eighties.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Dodgeball was like, felt like we did it every day. And when I started teaching and like, started teaching PE in 2011, you know I, we played dodgeball all the time. I played against my kids, my students, me and my parents, with the you know the Gatorskin balls, and we had fun. Students enjoyed it. Um, you know, I'd say no one got seriously hurt, um, and but the ball we're outside the ball curves a lot and you know you can't be 100% accurate on those throws. You know we say like, oh, no headshots. And I still have people in my district saying that, oh, we play with no headshots. It's like, well, how do you guarantee that, by the way? So you know, I didn't know what I didn't know back then, and you know, as I started talking to more teachers from really around the world speaking of the world, you know I just came to realize that maybe it wasn't the best practice.

Speaker 1: 14:48

So, first of all, our governing body, shape America, states that dodgeball is not an appropriate activity for PE class. You know school's been sued over dodgeball injuries. I'm just again telling you the facts. It is an elimination game, which we'll talk about in a minute for the most part, and kids as human targets is not appropriate, which I'm going to break that rule in a moment and I know I'm going to sound like whatever. But so once I noticed this, or once I kind of thought about this, I started taking a look around what is going on in my class when I play dodgeball. So, first of all, kids are cheating. Kids cheat all the time in dodgeball and they cheat all the time at everything. It seems like that's a whole other cultural thing that I'm saying, building a P culture that I try to deal with all the time, about playing fair and things like that. But I did notice, you know, the stronger kids were winning in dodgeball. They, you know, the not so strong physically or even maybe mentally students were scared.

Speaker 1: 15:52

I wrote an article about this, about my wife. I didn't know this until, I don't know, 10 years ago and we've been married almost 20 years. You know she was scared. She was hiding behind the basketball pole, things like that, when they played dodgeball when she was younger. And you know I love dodgeball so much I didn't realize that that, hey, not everybody loves dodgeball and it's just the intensity and the bad sportsmanship, so things like that. It just, you know, I decided it was time to phase it out. So how did I modify this? Well, again, I phased it out a long time ago. We, you know, we played a lot, then we played like a little bit, then we played a little bit less and then we just kept. I kept. You know, maybe monthly we played it Then at the end of the school year. This is a long time ago. At my current school we've never played dodgeball. I've been there four years. It's going to be my fifth year going into it pretty soon.

Speaker 1: 16:44

So, first of all, we play games that you know children enjoy. They kind of mimic dodgeball elements. We have pins. There's a great game I've played for a long time thephysicaleducatorcom Go to that. It's Joey Feith. His game is called Prairie dog pickoff. It's basically basically pins and hoops and kids have to guard. Um, that's one of my staples because it's kids aiming at pins. There have been times I played a game called racket ralph I don't know, we just called it that because it was popular at the time where kids build the bucket towers like bucket pyramids and the fix it felixes have to fix them when they get knocked down. So aiming at different targets besides students. That's how we've modified it, or I've modified it. Now.

Speaker 1: 17:29

Recently I have been playing Gaga Ball. I got a grant and I'm like, okay, I'll give it a try. So this goes against the kids as human targets thing, which I get, but they do aim for their feet or ankles. So it's not headshots, it's not even close, and kids are moving around. The line moves very fast and, yes, it contradicts my stance a little bit. So I did soften my stance a little bit and again, I'm just trying to keep with the times. But I just don't think dodgeball's the way to go, or you know, just modify it and make sure it's safe, fun, fair and kids are moving. So that is number four.

Speaker 1: 18:09

Number five are elimination games and that's what I started to talk about with dodgeball. So, man, there's some games I really really like that I had to either modify or get rid of, because once you eliminate students in games, obviously they're just sitting there or standing there and they or they're frozen for a long period of time or something where they're out, and I've had kids get really upset, like I mean like really upset with them coming out in games, and I don't like that at all, especially younger students. Or I have students that are they're on the spectrum for autism and if they get out, even in Foursquare, they get upset and I don't want that to happen. So I make a you know, I make modifications for these games where the kids are not out for long periods of time or they're never out, they just get back in line, kind of thing. So the first game was Freeze Dance, and Freeze Dance, you know I like doing it as a warm-up. Like you know, we have to listen, follow directions, freeze when it's time, and then we just have fun with it. Listen, follow directions, freeze when it's time, and then we just have fun with it. But when we have kids sitting out, especially kindergarten kids sitting out, they get upset, some of them, or they're just not moving in general. So that's just not a good thing. And so when I do freeze dance, no one gets out. It's just like you know I got you or whatever, and just pretend. So that was definitely not a good thing.

Speaker 1: 19:32

I've also there's a game oh man, there's a game I really like. It's called man Overboard and I've seen it called different things, where a captain, something with a captain, where you tell him to do different things, like I played a real basic where it's like okay, go to the back of the boat, go to the side of the boat, go to the middle of the boat, things like that. And there was a parent that came out a long time ago. He's like man, you just haven't run suicides, we can call them different names. I'm like yeah, I guess so, but it's a listening game where they have to go to a line and stop and not go over the line. I might try to trick them and say, okay, go to the back of the boat. I'm pointing at the back and I'm actually or have to eliminate this. You do have to eliminate in in this game.

Speaker 1: 20:16

And there's a lot of again, little ones especially. I don't play with the big kids. That's like a kindergarten first grade game. There's too many hurt, hurt feelings and, um, you know, I still play it once in a while, but I modify it where kids are never out. They're just like, okay, you get three chances and whatever, and uh, we just play the game for fun.

Speaker 1: 20:34

So, and there's other games as well. As a matter of fact, as I'm thinking about this, our chute ball tournament and our kickball tournament, both with fifth graders, teams have to be eliminated in order to find a winner and you know, ken, that leads to hurt feelings. I still do them and I talked. Know, ken, that leads to hurt feelings. I still do them and I talk to them about that, about how they're going to be one class that plays against the teachers at the end of the year for kickball. And with the shoot ball tournament, you know if we're going to do a final game where there's DJs and we turn the whole it used to be my cafeteria, but now my new school just the pavilion and the courts into like an arena and have DJs and announcers and halftime shows, like there has to be two teams and one team has to win and one team is going to lose. So I try not to do that at all, but in those cases I still do.

Speaker 1: 21:29

But anyways, to modify the games, I always give chances to get back in the games. So if you're playing a tag game, students can be rescued by their teammates or freed by doing an exercise, something like that, or an activity. They might have to go off to the side and do cup stacking, for you know, do a six stack and down For free stands. Again, I don't eliminate Four square, I make sure the lines are very short and even when I play gaga ball, like the line's very short, I put, you know, a bunch of kids in and then you know whatever, a few kids out and it just rotates really fast. So you know, that's the whole thing with elimination games. If you're going to do it, make sure kids get back in really fast within 30 seconds to a minute. So again, that is elimination games, and that is number five.

Speaker 1: 22:17

And now it is time for your cowbell tip of the day. All right, everybody. So your tip of the day is to think about the games you play and ask do they need a makeover? This goes for any of the five I talked about today or anything you play in your class in your program. Think of games that you know maybe they need a little help, maybe they've. You know they need to change with the times, maybe they're just not appropriate for the age level you're playing them at. You know things like that. So just take a look at your program, that's all, and see if this is something that resonates with you or something that you know. Maybe a nerve I hit, I guess. But you know, when I record these things it's about me as well, like I'm recording these for myself as far as reminders for myself, and it's not to say that I'm perfect or anything like that. It's to remind myself and anybody else that you know we need to take a close look at the games we're playing and have a purpose behind them and, you know, make sure kids are moving, learning and having fun. So that is your cowbell tip of the day.

Speaker 1: 23:38

Thank you everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to supersizephysedcom for more information or check out any of the links in the show notes, where I have lots of free goodies like free videos, free PDFs, free e-books and other things also for sale at a really low price if you want to support the show. So with that, pe Nation. Have a great day, week, weekend, in my case summer whenever you listen to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.