The Power of Student-Designed Games

Hello PE Nation!

Today I dig into the power of students creating their own games and why that creativity can change the energy of a PE program. I share real examples from my childhood games, then land on a practical, structured way to run “PE Design Squad” so it stays fun, clear, and safe. 
• using game creation to boost student ownership and creativity 
• borrowing inspiration from Design Squad style challenges 
• structuring student designs with equipment lists, setup steps, rules, and gameplay 
• adapting striking and fielding ideas like home run derby for PE 
• exploring tag and invasion variations like shadow tag, infection, and bike tag stories 
• learning from “Canadian football” and why kid rules happen 
• drawing hard safety lines, including what not to try 
• swapping groups so students test and refine each other’s games 
• managing open equipment access with responsibility and clean-up expectations 

Empower your students!

Dave

-Check out supersizedphysed.com for more resources, including free PDFs, articles, and courses to help with your PE program. Please leave a review to help grow this podcast and keep pushing our profession forward.

-Team Building Games Ebook (with preview): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Team-Building-Games-and-Activities-for-PE-Class-14063095

-Free resources include Substack and Medium articles with PE tips, games, and strategies

-High Fives and Empowering Lives book available as an ebook or paperback

-Paperback or download: HERE

-Amazon Ebook: HERE

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Super Size Fizz Ed podcast. My name is Dave, and today I want to talk about the power of game creation, or as I used to call it, and maybe still might call it, is PE Design Squad. So without further ado, here we go. All right, welcome in, PE Nation. So today, like I said, I want to talk about just the power of game creation and just the magic in students creating new games and come up with new things that you might not have even thought of before and I might not have never thought of before. And just how we can fit that into our units and our playtime, creative time, free days, whatever works for you and your program.

Design Squad Inspiration For PE

SPEAKER_00 1:09

So with that, I just want to go back in time a little bit. And uh first talk about how I used to teach this. And I'm, you know, inspired now with the summertime to get this going again with my students. I just time-wise, it's hard sometimes. I get it. You're doing all these units, you're doing all stuff, and it just it's not easy to you know give this uh a go, uh, you know, just game creation. But I've done this before. Again, it's been a while. Actually, I've done this at my former school, where there was a there was a show um on a PBS Kids called uh Design Squad. And so we used to watch episodes of that one during rainy days. Um, I'd fast forward some of it because it's these are long kind of episodes, but teams would would be creating things and they'd it'd be two teams and they'd try to create like a uh I kept it. There's other episodes, but a lot of them are sports related. So they'd create like a um a hockey goal shooting target thing that would move and things like that, or a soccer, um like a soccer, it would shoot the ball out to the player. Things like that, where um I'm trying to think if it was a basketball camera thing or some just some different things. And it got our my students' minds hopefully flowing with different ideas of things they can create. And then what I give them is a like a packet of you know, different things they'd have to, you know, they have to write down the equipment, they have to write down the um the all the steps, how to set it up, the gameplay, all the rules, you know, everything. And I let them create it in Teams. And I really want to do that again. And you know, because I was just thinking about kind of this is just my childhood and some of the games me and my friends would create, and again, this is a long time ago, but I want to go over some things that we created, and it is inspiring me a little bit to uh bring a f maybe a couple of these games back, not not a lot of them, because they would not be uh they just wouldn't work in a PE setting, but and one of them is pretty bad. Um but let me go over through through some of these. Um, I'll make this a boomer of the different types of games that me and my friends created when we were kids, and how maybe we can bring some of these back for PE. So here's the first one. Here we go.

Striking And Fielding Game Spins

SPEAKER_00 3:30

All right, let's start with um the different categories of games because I'm looking at this going, you know, I kind of made, and not just me, but me and my friends made some games that were um in different categories of games. So the first one, uh, we'll go with striking fielding because that's the simplest one, I guess. We used to do um, again, for striking fielding, it'd be like baseball, softball, kickball, those kind of games. If you're in a different country, uh like cricket, um I think there's uh there's some other games, but um, we the first one we did, I think a lot of people might have done this, it's just a home run derby. Um, so we'd play with with a wiffle ball. And in my backyard, there's a fence, and we'd have different points if you hit over the fence, and you know, if you hit into this yard, it'd be this many points, or this yard this many points, and that kind of thing. Um, pretty simple. And you know, the person pitching would would put some curve, you know, curveball on it, they'd hold it different ways and and just go all different, you know, with the wiffle ball, it just does different things. It was a lot of fun. And um, we also did uh tennis tennis home run when we're at uh tennis court, we just kind of pitch it to each other and just try to crank it over the fence with a tennis ball racket or tennis racket and a tennis ball, which was kind of easy. But when we were younger, it was a little harder. Um, so just think about those. I mean, like we could definitely do a home run derby um as a striking fielding, like extra game or something like that near the end of the unit. Um, you know, things like that. So that was my I don't know, that that was that was a tame compared to what's coming up. So that was striking and fielding. All

Tag And Invasion Game Mashups

SPEAKER_00 5:06

right, the second one is invasion games. So again, we didn't call these them, these these things when we were kids. Like I didn't know what an invasion game was or territorial game, you know, or striking fielding games. We just made up games. And one of the games, uh again, talking about tag games, talking about um again, invasion type games, um, we'll go tag first. We we did a shadow tag game where this is some of this was before school. We had a lot of time before school, when I think during middle school, and we'd go to one of the my friends' houses, and uh, if you're inside the shadow, the tagger can be inside the shadow, but they couldn't step outside the shadow, and other people would try to kind of go through it or you know, whatever. So um they'd have to be within the shadow and tag them, and then they would we would switch. So um pretty simple game, right? Uh, we'd play uh I think this is a game that a lot of people play in a different way. We played uh zombie tag or infection, so a lot of people do that. Um, we just did that a long time ago. So I think we did it, we did it around the neighborhood, though. We just went all over the place, um, played that. Um, we played bike tag. So on bicycles, we would play tag and we go all throughout the the you know, cul de sac, all throughout the the roads nearby. And if we had it, it was hard. It was if you were it, it was tough to play bike tag because you get worn out trying to tag somebody. Um the other one is this is really funny and kind of embarrassing. Um, we would play what we called Canadian football, and this is so dumb. Um, so we played at, and by the way, I live near Canada, so I should have known that this wasn't a real thing. But we play regular football, but sometimes we play Canadian rules. And if it was Canadian rules, it could be a one bounce. So you can catch the football on one bounce and that would count. Um, I don't know why we did that, I have no idea, but we created that. And again, I love my Canadian friends, by the way. I love Canada. Um, and I don't know why we did that, but it was called we called Canadian football. So one bounce is Canadian football, which is not even true. And I actually have two more. I was gonna put this these two in different categories, but I guess they would fit the invasion game categories. One of them's kind of ridiculous. They both are, but I like this one a lot. This one we played, I have no name for it. We I can't remember that what we called it, but we played with um, it was like a um, I don't even know how to call it what to call this or how to explain this. You would get um well, I I say you could play it in if you played like the three you get three steps, three seconds with the ball, that kind of thing, with like chook ball or something like that. However, we played like tackle, so in the backyard, and we'd play with uh two goals, like hockey goals, soccer goals, whatever. If we didn't have those, we had, you know, uh cones or whatever we'd made, whatever we had. And we'd use like a um, it used to be called track ball, but I think it's just a scoop, like a regular scoop. So I put a scoop in my um throwing hand and a baseball glove in my, you know, regular, my non-throwing hand, and that was the goalie. The goalie would have that. And then we had a the ball was actually a I don't even know if they make these anymore. It's like a on the outside, it's like um, almost like a rubber ball. Um, not quite rubber, but something like that. Um it's kind of a softer baseball that size. And then, but there's a hard ball in the middle of it. And so what we did was we we took that hard ball out of the middle and wrapped it in duct tape, and that was the ball. And then we just try to score. We just try to run and try to score on the other team, and we could pass it, things like that. That was an awesome game, by the way. I just I don't know what we call that. I'll have to ask some people back home what we call that, anybody that remembers that. And the other game, which was kind of ridiculous now that I think I put back on it, was um we we took we made we took a garbage bag, big picture, a big hefty garbage bag, and we made it into a kite, basically. We attached string to it, and we would try to um capture people in the garbage bag, which yes is a choking hazard, and I don't recommend that to anybody. Please do not ever do that game. But that's how we play. We try to run around and try to capture somebody in that garbage bag. But it just shows the power, the power of creation, right? And um just we you could do make different things with different materials, including garbage bags. Who knew, right? So let's move on to another category, shall we?

Wild Kid Games And Safety Lines

SPEAKER_00 9:32

All right, I'm gonna put the last two in just uh kind of a miscellaneous um group here. The one is um slip and slide baseball. I don't know how else to say it. I think that's what it was. It was um, I don't know what category this would be, but um, because it was just playing tag back and forth. Um it's not really a tag game, but you'd start at one base and there'd be slip and slide between two bases, basically, basically. I'm saying base a lot. So you'd have one person run like uh in a pickle, if you want to call it in baseball. You have to run back and forth, and you you just run back and forth on the slip and slide. And meanwhile, they'd throw uh we'd have two people with baseball gloves and a baseball or a probably probably a tennis ball or something, and we'd throw it back and forth, and the other person would try to run and slide and score, like make it safe to the other base. Um, and we'd just kind of we'd try to tag them out. So um obviously we can't do that in PE. We can't do slip and slide, um, but some kind of tag game back and forth, um, you know, just a uh in a pickle kind of thing. So I know this sounds crazy, but I'm just thinking of some games we made as a kid, as kids. The other one, um, I made this is totally not even I mean, I know I made this during study hall. Like I made this in middle school during study hall, just for me and my friend. It was kind of like if you remember the game Stratomatic, it was kind of like that where I just made up a baseball dice game. And I pick I had a couple teams, I was really big into like the 86 Mets back then. That was my team. And um, I just come up with I'd make my own baseball cards basically, basically, with uh index cards and just kind of write their names on them. And you know, uh I made it into a dice game where if they rolled a certain number, they got a hit. If they rolled a certain number, they get out. And same thing with the pitchers. Um, so I just made up a game like that. It was kind of like a game that was out there, but it was my my little generic version of it. So those are just some of the games, just some of the random games, right? A lot of random things, but um yeah, that's that's what we did back in the day.

Classroom Plan For Student Game Design

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And now it is time for our cowbell tip of the day. All right, so that was kind of a random episode as far as some of the crazy games that um me and my friends created when we were kids. And please don't ever do that garbage bag game. Um, some of them, you know, it just got my juices flowing for the for next school year. You know, got me thinking about, well, I want to un just unleash their creativity students. You know, when when I did this before, the students came up with some really cool games. And there were a couple of games that we kept playing. And that was some, as a matter of fact, I want to add that to it. Once they um, you know, you design they design a game and they come up with the rules, another team has to play their game and they have to kind of swap. So you'd have to play each other's games, or if it's a big group game, you know, they can get a couple groups together and play. And it takes a little bit of well, it takes a lot of planning, but you know, I gave them access to I mean, almost all of our equipment in our room. I mean, they would have to write it down, here's what you need, here's what, you know, here's what the team needs. And I let them go get the stuff in our room, like not just make a big old mess and everything. They had to put it back and, you know, whatever. But they got access to just a ton of equipment. Some of the stuff I forgot that we even had. They just kind of like, you know, here's what we need, here's our game, here's the rules, and let's go. And they did a great job with it. So I'm gonna encourage you to empower your students to create some games or at least one game this school year. And that is your cowbell tip of the day. Thank

Resources, Links, And Sendoff

SPEAKER_00 13:35

you everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to super sizefizz.com for more information and definitely check out the links in the show notes with the new year coming up. I have team building games and other things that you could check out that might hopefully help your PE curriculum. And with that, have a great day, week, weekend, summer. Oh boy, summer's getting, it's getting near the end of summer. Not quite, but we're in July when I'm recording this. So, you know, it's getting there. Um, I go back early August. So, anyways, have a great day, week, weekend, summer, whenever you're listening to this. And let's keep pushing our profession forward.