From Stranger Things To PE: Finding Your “Max” Song, Game, And Go-To Moves

Welcome to the Upside Down,

Today we use a Stranger Things hook to build a practical “Max” list for PE: the song, games, instant activities, warmups, attention grabs, and unit we can repeat without losing joy or learning. The aim is alignment between what we love and what students actually want.

• defining a “Max” list that anchors planning
• Max game: Rollout for tight spaces

• Max instant activity: Tractor Buoy Sea Monster
• Rainy day Max activity: cup stacking for focus and flow
• Attention-grabbing Max system: Match Me and clap patterns
• Capstone Max unit: fifth-grade Tchoukball tournament

Take care,

Dave

-Kindergarten PE Games and Activities ebook ($3.99 for 10 activities)

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Grab my free copy of the Outside PE Checklist as a reference that includes equipment, procedures, transitions, and other essentials for successful outdoor teaching

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-Paperback or download: HERE

-Amazon Ebook: HERE

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing The “Max” Idea
• 1:04 Stranger Things And The Max Song
• 3:44 Defining Your Max Picks In PE
• 4:33 Max Game: Rollout And Variations
• 8:16 Capture The Flag Family
• 9:41 Max Instant Activity: Tractor Buoy Sea Monster
• 12:08 Max Warmups: Music Mixes And Fit Radio
• 15:13 Rainy Day Max: Cup Stacking
• 17:03 Max Attention Grabbers By Grade

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the YouTuber Science for Zed podcast. My name is Dave. And today let's talk a little more Stranger Things as we get closer to the premiere. Yes, I'm a Stranger Things dork. And let's talk about your max song and your max game and your max instant activity. Things like that. And if you're not sure what that means, I'll explain after this. So here we go. Alright, welcome in PE Nation. So as we get closer to the Stranger Things premiere, I know some of you don't ever watch that, and that's okay. This is not just about Stranger Things. This is about education. This is about PE, this is about everything that we always talk about here. So Stranger Things, let's go back for a moment. There's a girl in Stranger Things, and I hope I'm not giving away anything, but if you haven't watched it by now, I hope you do. But in season four, which is the uh current uh season before the final season five coming out soon, uh there's a girl named Max, and she um can only keep the the bad guy away, Factna, by playing her favorite song, and the song she plays over and over and over again, and it's actually by Kate Bush called uh Running Up the Hill or something, something like that. Running Up That Hill. It's funny because I never heard of I've heard of Kate Bush before for one song, and it was in the 80s, it was with with Peter Gabriel called Don't Give Up. Um, besides that, I never really heard of her or any of her songs, but they chose that one, which is kind of interesting. And I thought, well, what if I had to listen to a song over and over and over again, what would my max song be? And then furthermore, if I had to play one game over and over and over again with my students, what game would there be their favorite? What game would could could we play over and over again? This is just a fun exercise. What instant activity would they do every single time just for like a five-minute game? What warm-up song could they do every single day, or could I play every single day? And it's just an interesting activity that I was thinking of, kind of like your your best of list. So I guess to back up, my favorite song ever, and it's my definitely my my max song is Bad by You Two. I could listen to that song over and over and over again and never get tired of it. There have been phases of my life, I'm sure same thing probably with you, where there's certain songs where you're like, Oh, that's my favorite song right now, and then you kind of get sick of it, or times change, or you know, the genres kind of change, and all of a sudden, hey, ska music isn't as cool anymore, or something like something like that, or grunge, or whatever. And it's like, okay, well, what what song can be played over and over again for you, no matter what? And that is bad by you too. It's from the Unforgettable Fire, my favorite album ever. And uh, yeah, that is my absolute song. I could listen to it all the time. And there's different versions of it too, different live versions, different uh, there's like a more of an acoustic kind of version of it, and uh just absolutely my favorite, and I could listen to that all the time. And lately I have been, it's just as more of an experiment for this uh this podcast and the um the article. So I'd say think of your max song. What is a song that you can play over and over again and never get tired of? Or is there one? Or there's is there more than one? I do have other songs that are close but not quite, and I don't want to bore you with all those, so I won't do that. But so that made me think of different things in PE. I always try to connect what I'm listening to, what I'm watching, um, observing with PE or education. So I thought of, well, what is my max, you know, fill in the blank? And let's go through a few things here now that we can add to our list and think about. And if yours are different than mine, that's fine. This is just an experiment of a thought. Like, what can you what if you had to play this forever, or what is this your favorite, this, your favorite units, your favorite this and that. And let's go through a few of these and see what we cook can come up with. So let's make this a boomer. Here we go. All right, so number one is your favorite game, and then as this as a separate one, your students' favorite game that they could play over and over and over again if you let them. So I'd say for me, the game I would play every day if we if we could, is uh probably probably uh rollout, because that is my students one of their favorite games, and we do play it a lot, and I I could put the I will put the show notes or in the I will put the game in the show notes, and I did a whole episode on rollout and did a I have a PDF and things like that if you want to check it out. So Rollout is a game that my my para made up with his with the former teacher that was there before me. It's a fantastic rainy day, uh, or if it's raining out, like the fields are wet, the courts wet, we can play under the or we don't have a huge pavilion, but uh big enough for three classes to play this game. And it's also good when I mean just even last week or the week before, we had to all of a sudden get off the field because there was a big truck coming in to pick up the lights from trunk or treat. I mean, just like random things happen, and we can't use the field, or we can't use this or that. And rollout has been the best game by far. And we play it a lot, and the kids love it. Again, I won't go into everything, but it's basically um like sitting down gagaball kind of thing. And again, I could put all that in the show notes. I will if you want to check that out. But that is my uh my max game, if you will, my my go-to game, my favorite game for the students, and they love it. I'd say the other one would be uh like crossover or capture the flag. Let's go with capture the flag. And most of you play a version of capture the flag. We actually play three different versions, actually, more really. But the we kind of progress from crossover to just getting your team, that's just getting your team across to capture the flags. We'd put like three jerseys um on cones and they have to go, you know, capture them and bring them back, and then capture the football, which is where they have to get the football across to the other side. And there's other versions as well, and even Hunger Games, which I re-released in my article. Um, I could put out there. Um, different versions we play sometimes or capture the um uh like uh bucket stacks. They have to make pyramids uh with the buckets, they have to capture the the buckets and bring them back. Just different games like that, where they have to run across, get something, or save somebody. Those would be the I think for my students, their max uh game to play like over and over and over again. And that is number one. Number two is my max instant activity. So again, this is something that we do either right away or we do um kind of like for five minutes just to um get kids moving, or even at the end of class, if we I don't know, we just have to come in because it's sprinkling outside. Um we just come on, come in and just do a quick game uh to to end the day and just to have a little fun, get them moving again. And just because we haven't maybe been moving as much because of the weather or whatever. So I'd say tractor buoy sea monster. And again, I shared um most of these I'm gonna talk about in um recent podcasts or in my ebooks. Um and I'll just put those in the show notes if you want. I'm not gonna go through every single game and how to play every single one of them, but um, it's kind of like rock, paper, scissors, except it's tractor, buoy, sea monster, and it's something the kids really enjoy because it's it's a you know a version of rock, paper, scissors, and just like a twist on it, and they get to be different like characters, and I I've seen different games like this before. It's not something you know earth-shattering or groundbreaking, but it's something I learned a long time ago. It was 1999 at Summer Camp. I learned this game and it stuck with me. And I wasn't even a PE teacher that back then, so I was like, oh, this is cool, and it just kind of stuck with me. And I've used it here and there um for years, and then I really started using it the past couple years just as a quick, quick uh, you know, game, quick fun thing they could do with partners and just move around the pavilion, things like that. So that is my max instant activity, tractor, buoy, sea monster. So my max warmup in general is just my song mixes that I make. And I made, again, these are all the things I've done before on podcasts and things like that, but my uh the the music mixes I make, I call them my music montages, little clips of different songs that the kids can uh you know move to. And then a lot of times I'll just make up moves, either exercise or a little bit of dance, or they might be real, like you know, the YMCA, like that's a real thing that they can move to. And um, so that's definitely my warm-up, you know, max thing to do. Like almost every day we do the music mixes. We always do music as a warm-up, and I'll add different, again, different exercises, or I'll just make something up on the on the go. Uh, but then we do have some set patterns. I say my other one is using uh fit radio. There's some music mixes on there as well that we use a lot, and I have some, you know, I don't want to say choreographed, but kind of like moves to that to some of those mixes, and again, the kids really enjoy that. I do that with the upper grades, the lower grades is more the music mixes and well, and the upper grades as well, but fit radio definitely for third, fourth, and fifth. And so I'd say that is my max uh way to warm up, right? Music mixes, things like that. So that's that's max right there. There you go. Number four is my favorite rainy day activity. Now, I know some of you don't teach outside, so this is like, well, what does this mean? But my favorite thing to do inside is actually uh it's cup sacking. I love cupsacking and I love uh or speed stacking, whatever you want to call it. I love uh teaching students how to do that and do the patterns. And if you're not sure how to do any of this, just look it up on YouTube. But speed stacking or cup stacking, competition stacking, um, things like that. So just the teaching them the patterns. We actually have a cup stacking club that I run every year, and my students, I've seen them get really good at it, and not only just on rainy days, but also in my club. Some students are really, really good. I had one student um go to a different city or yeah, well, like New York. He was in New York with his family and they had a tournament up there, and he he he placed really high in it. It was like, oh, that's really cool. So, anyways, um I enjoy doing that during rainy days when we have to be inside the classroom. We um have limited space and you know, it's just something fun for the students to do. If it's for the younger students, I let them kind of explore and build and uh just different things like that. And then for the older students, I teach them the patterns, and I just love I just love cupsacking. So that is my um rainy day activity max thing to do, and that is number four. Number five is my favorite max attention grabber. And I've used different things in the past, and I've used a lot of different things in the past to get students' attention. So my go-to is my max, I'd say it's it depends on the grade level. My max thing to do with my younger students is do match me. And that's when the students have to match what I do. And I've done that even with my um, I also on the weekends, I've I coach and um referee uh different sports. And for the little ones, I do match me as well, where they have to match what I do, and it's it's really neat seeing them actually match me doing, hey, match me, and I'm doing it like a chicken, or match me um putting a hand over my on my head and doing like a shark or a unicorn. And that is definitely a uh my max attention grabber. That is a thing that helps me all the time get the students' attention, and I definitely check that out if I like if you if you're you know you're struggling with something to get their attention, that is definitely the way to go. So for the older students, just clapping in a pattern or whistle doing my whistle in a pattern, and they you know repeat that. I'm sure that's a lot of people do that. That is my max uh attention grabber for my older students. And yeah, that's that's worked for years. I've done other things as well, lots of other things, and but those are my two max attention grabbers by far. They work the best for me and my students, and I, you know, uh they they just they're the way to go for me, and that is number five. So the final one is my max unit, and this will be no shock to anybody that's been listening for a long time, but my max unit is definitely my fifth grade chookball unit. I've done that for I guess I don't know how many years now, uh, probably seven or eight years at two different schools, uh, maybe more than that. But you know, teaching the students chookball is first of all not easy. It takes a while. I'm actually uh starting right now, not to teach jukeball, but but definitely lead up games to it so the students can get a grasp for the invasion game strategies that we're gonna use and just how to pass, how to uh kind of spread out, you know, things like that, like just move around. Um, but the rules if you play chookball are uh, you know, there's quite a few. And you know, we delve into that, you know, all of that, and then we have our tournament. And again, I've talked about this quite a bit, so I'm not gonna go into super detail, but we like the students I I form teams, they make posters, they get a team name, they have you know, just all these team responsibilities because it's a sport education unit, and we run through the whole tournament until we have a final two teams um that are left, and they do a uh final game where we do it in front of uh administration and parents and uh the fourth grade because it's a fifth grade unit, but the fourth graders get to watch the final game, and it's just amazing. We put on a halftime show and just all sorts of things. We turn our well, my former school was we had a big cafeteria, so we turn the cafeteria into it like an arena. Um my current school has a smaller cafeteria, so we just do it outside, but either way, there's DJs and announcers, and it's amazing. So that's by far my favorite unit I do every year, and I can't wait to do it again. So that is definitely my max unit. It is jukeball. And now it's time for your cowbell tip of the day. So your tip of the day is really just to think about this these things. Think about what is your favorite, you know, all these things. And just you know, if it's something that doesn't resonate with the students, but it just resonates with you, maybe it's time to switch some things out. Like, there's just times when I notice, well, oh man, I love this game, but the students really aren't into it. And or the the certain you know, song dance I do, especially the older kids. Some of them like, oh, you know, we gotta dance, and like okay, so I switch things up if as needed, but think about what their max thing is and what your max thing is, and hopefully they match up. Like I said, rollout is definitely my max game, or their max, it's also their max game. I say that again and uh like capture the flag kind of thing. Those match up. So I yeah, there's kind of two on that one, but um they they love those games. And if they match up, then you have a hey, look, um, a max match. I don't know, I just made that up. So, but definitely think about that. Hopefully you enjoyed this. I just kind of you know was thinking of Stranger Things and been watching it recently, just getting ready for the season five uh final season. So hopefully you enjoy that as well, but definitely check it out and think about your max uh everything. And that is your cowbell tip of the day. Thank you everybody for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to super sizefizzad.com for more information and check out all the links in the show notes. Things I talked about today, different PDFs, podcasts, um, articles that um involve this as well as the other things again. I talked about and other things as well for strategies, tips, and tricks and all that good stuff for PE. Um, just love to have you part of my uh Substack or Medium. If you want to follow me on Medium, there's articles if you're more of a reader. And, you know, if you are more of a podcast listener, I just appreciate your support by leaving a hopefully a five-star review. It'll take three and a half seconds to just click on a link and you know, that helps the show grow. And that's my goal for all of this. So thank you, everybody. And take care, P Nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you're listening to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward.