Creating a PE "Amazing Race"!

Let's Travel PE Nation!

Who doesn't love "The Amazing Race"? After an unsuccessful first attempt years ago, I'm bringing back a more structured, inclusive version with carefully formed teams and diverse challenges.

• Theme is vitally important
• Teams will be created to include everyone
• Challenges divided into three types: technical skills, logical reasoning, and communication
• Point system for grades 4-5 
• Younger grades focus on completion rather than competition
• Ten challenges over two weeks (about five class periods)
• Goal is team building and letting all students shine, not just athletes
• Starting in week three after establishing classroom procedures and team building activities

Take care,

Dave

Podcast with Michael Todisco

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the PE Amazing Race
• 3:38 Theming the Race
• 6:18 Team Formation and Format
• 9:03 Point System and Healthy Competition
• 11:00 Team Building and Challenge Diversity
• 14:56 Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Supersize Phys Ed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about the amazing race and how I'm going to bring it back to my PE class. So without further ado, here we go. All right, welcome in PE Nation.

Speaker 1: 0:40

So first of all, I love watching the Amazing Race. I'm sure some of you watch it, some of you don't, but it's fun to see a variety of teams from all over the United States I think it's mostly United States Race around the globe to compete in challenges that only one is crowned champion. It's pretty fun, right, and I've also learned new games from the show, such as foaling. So that was I originally saw that on the Amazing Race. It was one of the challenges they had to do when they were in Detroit, michigan, and I tried to do a kind of a PE Amazing Race. It was a few years ago. It was actually it was my first year at my current school and we were in between paras I have, or I had one para, same para I still have, or I had one para, same para I still have, but then my other para had retired, and so we're in between paras at the time, kind of just like rotating subs, things like that. So you know, I tried to do this and it was a lot of work and I basically did it all by myself and the paras and well, the para and the sub, they weren't really I don't know enthusiastic about it, they weren't really on board, they didn't really want to help me as much as I guess I was used to people helping, like paras helping and volunteering a little bit. So anyways, it didn't go well and I also, although I prepared or I felt like I prepared a lot, it was just kind of a mess organizationally.

Speaker 1: 2:01

I let the kids pick their teams and which can be a good thing sometimes, but you know, it's just in general, it doesn't work a lot of times. So they pick their own teams that I gave them a list of things to accomplish and they kind of just went and it was just kind of a mess. It was a lot of it was a lot of classes. So now I see three classes at a time with myself and two paras, which is perfect. At the time it was four classes and three paras, so I'd always have two classes by myself and each para would have a class. You know, each person would have a class. So you know I'm used to two classes at a time. That's what I do all the time. That's what I've always done, but the past couple of years it's been just one class per adult, which has been great. So it was just a mess, though it didn't work well and I kind of gave up on it.

Speaker 1: 2:52

That turned around, though, because I recorded a podcast about a year ago with Michael Tedisco, a fellow PE teacher, and he recounted his excitement and his students' enthusiasm around his PE Amazing Race and just some great ideas he had, and if you haven't heard that episode, I will put in the show notes. Definitely listen to that. He renewed my faith, I guess, in Amazing Race and what I can do with my students, so it gave me hope and just interest to bring it back this coming year. So this will be my fourth year Sorry, this will be my fifth year, wow, in my current school, and I'm excited about it. It's been a few years, obviously, so I'm going to bring it back and better. So here's how. I have a few boomers for you. So here we go.

Speaker 1: 3:38

All right, the first one is theme, and I like what Michael Tedisco did. His theme is like going around the world and I really like that a lot, I mean just like the Amazing Race. So he goes to different work. We're bringing in uh cultures and all sorts of things, facts and figures and whatnot, so great stuff, and I think I'm gonna do that next time. Here's me talking it up and I'm like I'm gonna change it up a little bit so things can be anything. I mean, they could be uh, outer space, like star wars, they can be the old west, they can be, you know, sea battles, um, or, like I said, around the world, um, I wouldn't make it real super gender specific as far as like barbie or gi joe, which you know, again, it's fine, if you know it does cross into whatever. So it's just, um, you know, you're gonna alienate some kids that don't like that, or, like you know, let's say it's I don't know, just something very specific and something that a lot of kids like but a lot of kids might not. So my theme is actually going to be my Webster, my mascot, our mascot. If you have not seen Webster, he is red and he is a like a. He's a pool float, but he's the wacky waving tube man that you'll see outside of like car dealerships and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 5:12

And I brought Webster over from my former school so I'm going to make a Webster space race. I mean, everybody loves Webster, all the kids love him and we do skits with him and you know learning with him, especially with the younger kids, but even the older kids like him and I figured the space race is going to be grades two to five, maybe three to five, I'm thinking definitely three, four and five. I think Cengre can handle it, but they will quote unquote travel from planet to planet, completing challenges. To get Webster home. I'm going to make up some kind of thing where he has to go home. He has a way of talking so he can give them messages. And I just made up some planet names, some as I'm just going right now. How about Zurb and Glick and Zano and I don't know? I'm just making those up. So they're going to go to different planets and have different challenges as teams. So definitely have a theme. Don't just say, well, we're racing and here's some challenges. Like make it exciting and make it into a theme and that is a first boomer, all right. Next we have is format. So I messed this up last time Instead of letting the kids pick their own teams, which sometimes is okay, or have captains that pick, maybe like one student, and then just kind of disperse the other ones.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Don't ever do that. You know kindergarten kickball thing where you know I pick, then you pick, then I pick, then you pick and some kid gets picked last and there's hurt feelings. Don't ever do that. So you know I pick, then you pick, then I pick, then you pick and some kid gets picked last and there's hurt feelings. Don't ever do that. So you know I'm going to make teams, because last time I was like here you know just make teams and go and it was chaotic. So you know what I'm going to do is make probably teams of about five and so that's about five. Let's say five times five is 25. So it's about five teams per class and there might be some teams of six plus we get some teams that are or classes that are split, so they might get, you know, I might get three kids from this class over here, three kids from this class over here, so we might get up to 30-ish kids per class and again, I'll make teams of about five or six and I'll probably do what I usually do for, like my Chuteball tournament is, do the Team Shake app.

Speaker 1: 7:27

It just mixes up the kids and shakes them up, and you can be as fair as you want. You can put them by you know strengths by gender, by keeping certain kids away from each other, by putting certain kids with each other as well, and you can do that with pen, putting certain kids with each other as well, and you can do that with pen and paper or pencil and paper as well. I've done that before too. I just take a class and I start putting kids on teams. It takes a little longer, but you can do that. So anything to make the teams fair.

Speaker 1: 7:53

By the way, I would definitely put at least two or three boys and two or three girls per team. I try not to put it like four boys and one girl or the opposite, things like that, and I don't I try not to put all boys or all girls. I want a mix of teams and I want various strengths from the students. I don't want all the athletes on one team and, by the way, we'll talk about in a moment the structure and the challenges you know. I want to build strong teams based on varieties of strengths of students and make diverse teams. Where students are interacting with others. They might not even know that well or normally wouldn't hang out with. You know, I don't put all athletes on one team or all non-athletes on one team. I want to make fair teams and it's not all athletic games and we'll talk about that in a moment. So, you know, hopefully they'll make new friends during a race, they'll learn things about each other and, you know, again, get to know each other. So you know, this is, I think it's going to be a great way to do it. We're, again, we're tightening up the structure. We have, you know, set teams and they're going to work together to, you know, on these challenges.

Speaker 1: 9:03

All right, so the next one is point system, and this is where friendly competition comes into play. There's going to be 10 challenges to complete in two weeks. Now I see each class every other day, so this should take about five class periods, I'm thinking. So it's like two planets per day and the adult coaches can rotate planets when the class is finished with certain challenges. If needed, we can extend the race by a week and that's okay. So each challenge will have a point system based on the following First place gets five points for challenge. Second gets fourth. Third gets third, fourth gets two points and fifth gets one point. So you know I'm going to make scoreboards, just like I do in my shootball tournament with fifth graders, and after 10 challenges we'll have a winner for the class.

Speaker 1: 9:49

So with the younger grades, especially second grade, maybe even third, I'm probably not going to keep score, it's just finishing the challenges and, you know, showing teamwork and sportsmanship and you know that kind of thing. That's what's most important and it is anyway, even with fourth and fifth. I just know that fourth and fifth might like a challenge like this and you know this is where we talk about this stuff. It doesn't have to be, we don't have to do points, but you know it's nice for them to learn these lessons. No-transcript give out webster coins. They're just little plastic treasure coins for every to everybody for participating and doing a great job. So you know I believe in healthy competition, but completing the race with fair play and fun is the most important goal to me.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And now let's move on to the next one. So the final one of the main format is team building and this is really the ultimate goal of the race. So my plan is to start this I think week three, because weeks one and two will be more like rules, procedures, expectations and simple games. Just simple things to build teamwork, camaraderie, just team building games. We're definitely not going to sit there. We're going to play and we're going to move, but we're going to learn and I'm also going to get to know certain personalities that I might not know as well, to figure out what teams are going to work. So I'll discuss the race, probably in week two, and begin to form teams. Then, as we approach week three, they can name their teams. We might. I don't think we're gonna do posters, but you could do that. Like in the Chookball tournament we do team posters. I don't want to spend too much time on that, so, but they definitely can name their teams, which I think is always fun. The kids always show a lot of creativity with that. My daughter still remembers her team name from Chookball and she's going into eighth grade. So you know things like that. I think it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 12:06

So my goal again is to diversify the games into challenges so all the students can shine. So I'm breaking them down to about three different types of challenges. One is technical skill, so that's like students are good at, like bowling and putting and throwing and catching, things like that, and hopefully that's everybody. But you know that's one type of challenge, like technical skills, okay. So number two would be logical reasoning. So I'm gonna have puzzles for them to solve. Some of them are pencil and paper, some of them are like riddles, some of them be like question and answer sessions about like health, nutrition, games, skills, and they can earn points for their teams, things like that. So again, this brings into the non-athlete or maybe the athletes as well.

Speaker 1: 12:50

So, and just trying to diversify different games for different students. And the third one is communication. So they can, students can lead and encourage their teams to victory, like we're going to do some blindfolding games, some stacking and building games, things where they can talk more and they can lead the group and they can just be a communicator and an encourager. And you know so my goal is to, you know, give every student a chance to do some different things in the group. I don't want kids just sitting there doing nothing and everybody else does everything, and hopefully this will work. I'm hoping. You know it's not perfect, but that's my goal. But I want every student to feel like they're part of the team and to be able to help with different aspects of the race.

Speaker 1: 13:42

And now let's go to your cowbell tip of the day is to maybe think about doing this as well for your classroom, your class, your program. You know I'm excited about this. I know the students will enjoy the challenges, the teamwork, and they enjoy Webster. So hopefully they'll get to know their teammates, appreciate the variety of talents on their team, personalities on their team. And you know, it's not just about sports, specific skills and PE. It's about, you know, nurturing the entire child. It's about making and helping grow good people, not just great athletes. I've always said that. So that's my hope for this unit and, you know, I hope that you will give it a try and let me know if you, you know, want to try it and you need some help with it. Reach out to me always and we'll. You know, I will send you any information I have after I do this especially. I haven't done it yet, but in a few weeks I will. And uh, yeah, that is your cowbell tip of the day day.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Thank you everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it, as always. Go to supersizefizedcom for more information and definitely follow me on Substack for more articles and links to my podcast. They are free articles and I send them out twice a week. It's either a link to a podcast or it's an article that is PE-specific and hopefully gives you value. As always, I've asked you recently if you could leave a hopefully five-star review for the podcast. It'll take you, I said I think the thing says 10 seconds. It might take you three. Just click on the link and give me a hopefully five star if it's worth it. If not, let me know. I'll work to improve as best I can. But I appreciate all of you listening in today and have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you listen to this PE Nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Let's keep pushing our profession forward, forward. Thank you.