Body expression

Although body expression is included as a content block in the Royal Decree, most of the times is skipped. Unfortunately, I have not been an exception and I hardly worked body expression during my years in primary and secondary education. Concerning primary, I do not remember having learnt any body expression in PE classes. On the contrary, I worked with it during some music classes preparing dances for the last of the term, learning how to dance "chotis" or preparing representations for the Peace Day. I think that all these activities were focused on the idea of identifying body expression with doing choreographies but I think that the concept is wider and it implies how to understand the world and how to communicate this with your own body. Therefore, this activities were partially body expression, since teachers did not allow students change the steps nor did they encouraged creativity. In conclusion, I worked a little of body expression when I was young, but only in a passive way.

                  

During my secondary school years, I worked body expression twice. One time was preparing a choreography. But then again the concept of body expression was a little bit misunderstood because it happened as in primary education. However, I had a teacher in second of ESO who really taught us some of the ideas. We were asked to listen a song and we had to move freely. Then the teacher told us some ideas or feelings and we had to performed them with our body. Finally, we had to invent a creative-movement sequence in which we had to tell a story. This sequence had to suit with the song. The groups had some classes to think about what the music transmitted, what the story would be and what were the movements for each person. Finally, all the groups presented their creative-movement sequences and the rest of the students had to interpret them. From my point of view, this was a truly activity of body expression and it was very enjoyable.

                                    

Sometimes, the fact that body expression is skipped is explained as a gender problem. On the whole, girls often show a more positive attitude towards this kind of activities than boys. From my point of view, this is a matter of stereotypes and prejudices most of the times and PE teachers have to deal with this. For instance, "boys don't dance" and "girls are bad at sports". Of course, this is not true, but it makes that participation and attitudes are predetermined even before explaining the activities. This is a pity because both genders refuse to do some things or even refuse to believe in their own capabilities, which is worse from my point of view. However, at the end of the activities is shown that effort, willingness and self-esteem play a very important role.

On the other hand, I think that boys feel more insecure while doing body expression because they are less used to it than girls. Dealing with coordination and rhythm it is not always an easy task. But here the role of the teacher is very important, since body expression should not foster comparison or discouragement. Body expression activities (as all the rest of the contents in PE) should be chosen because they are fun and because they foster self-esteem and relationships among mates. 

                                  

In addition, if the teacher knows how to manage the class, body expression activities do work for girls and boys. For instance, the activity that I described above. Maybe not all the students were comfortable or even confident with the task that they had to perform. However, two aspects were essential for the activity to succeed: team work and creativity. For those who were less skilled, the help of the mates was really useful and those who were uncomfortable, owing to prejudices towards it, had the opportunity to make their own creative-movement sequence and to realize that there is no good or bad way of expressing themselves. Moreover, there are some readings that can help to teach body expression. The article that we had to read was very interesting and gave a creative approach towards these issue, something that I think that is essential so as not to stigmatize body expression.

                                

All these ideas were shown in the practical class in which two groups proposed different activities. The main idea that I learnt from the first group was that music is a really good tool when working with children. It can help us to relax them, to activate them or even to have fun. In addition, body expression is really connected with music since both of them try to express feelings and ideas so the link can be really clear for children to understand.

                        

On the other hand, the next group showed us an idea that I really like that is that body expression is much more than dancing. There a wide range of activities that we can do with our pupils and that is the best way to eradicate all the prejudices that I mentioned above. All these activities were really funny thus children would realize that body expression is not a gender issue at all but a way to interact with other people. Body expression then it is essential in order to develop the social domain. But if teachers keep on skipping this content, they won't only decrease the learning but they won't complete the task of giving students a whole education.

Sports session

In order to put into practice all the ideas that we learnt in the theoretical class, we devoted the next practical class to performing a physical education session teaching different sports.

From my point of view, sports require a lot of practice in order to learn the different specialized movement skills. That is a problem regarding the few time that teachers have in order to cover the whole curriculum. This was a problem as well for us, since we designed a series of activities that couldn't be carried out due to the shortage of time. Apart from the time issue, I think that it was one of the most amusing classes. All the activities we did were very enjoyable.

                                 

 

After having enjoyed a sports session I have learnt three main ideas. First of all it is that rules have to be introduced little by little. Apart from the boredom, it is impossible that children can assimilate all the rules of a sport if the teacher just read the list of them. Therefore, children should learn them one by one and it is always better if they experience them through the practice. For instance, a child will embrace better the rule that in basketball you cannot run with the ball in your hands if he plays a game that has it. Most of the rules are not very complicated, but they require attention. That is why it is easier for them if they are put into practice little by little, because they will be aware of just learning one thing.

                             

This leads to the next idea that is that difficulty should increase little by little as well. The first step is that children explore the possibilities of the sport and the material. Then, they get use to some rules and finally, the combination of both leads to games whose purpose demands more from themselves and their skills. The difficulty should be increased once the students are ready and all the tasks should take into account pupils' competence.

For instance, some games can deal with the content block: image and perception as my group did when students had to banged at the same time as the couch blew the whistle. In addition, teaching sports it is not only playing matches, there are lot of games related to sports. But again this is a matter of creativity and wanting to make the best of each class.

                    

"Gaming"

Although this is a blogged devoted to physical education, I would like to start this entry reflecting about a linguistic issue. It is very interesting how languages work and evolve along time. For instance this is the case of English which has the verb "play" for the Spanish word "jugar", however, it only has the substantive "game" for the words "juego" and "deporte". Therefore, the difference between these two words in English is not as clear as in other languages such as Spanish. This is an interesting event because before becoming a sports, all the sports were games. Nonetheless, nowadays it has been specified what can be considered a sport and not. Sports have fixed rules and are managed by institutions such as the FIFA. On the other hand, games have more freedom when playing them. Nevertheless, the main difference is that whilst the main goal in games is to have fun, in sports it is not and I think that this is also something to reflect. 

                   

Owing to the fact that sports are more complex than games, they have more goals than games. On the one hand we can find the one related to competition and trying to be the winner. However, there are also collateral benefits that have to do with having fun, willingness, personal satisfaction, team work, development of moral concern regarding fair play and so on. Therefore, it is obvious that sports are educative and really advantageous. The problem arises when "amateur" sport is compared with top-class sport. First of all, people should be concerned that whereas everyone can practice sport only a few can become elite athletes. Therefore, the level of exigency and the kind of activities that are required in the school and in a federated team are completely different. So it happens with the kind of objectives that are associated with both. In the school, the main goal is to learn and to allow children become better people giving them the tools that will facilitate their future years. Whilst in the top-class sport the main goal is to succeed. As an example of this idea, the professor showed us an extract of a shocking documentary about artistic gymnastics training in China.

                    

In addition, media is spreading the misconception that sport is either linked with fame, money and veneration or with corruption and cheating. This mistaken ideas have made that children consider sport players idols that have to be imitated, but players are not usually good models of behaviour. As a result, most of the parents want their children do sport but not because of the good reasons. This leads to the importance of the teacher's role, who has to deal with the parents' pressures and try to make that their children like doing sport and exercise because the benefit of just becoming physically educated people. 

            

I also realized that sports fit perfectly into the subject of physical education, because, as we learned the first day of class, the main goal of the subject is teach movement and through movement. Curiously enough, it happens the same with sports since students learn to play sports and through playing them. I would like to highlight that we can find again the underlying idea that attitudinal objectives are as important as motor and motor-cognitive ones.

Finally, the teacher has to have some knowledge about sports in order to plan the ones that he will develop in class. This is important because some of them are more complex or they have the same characteristics regarding tactics, for instance basketball and hockey. Therefore, the teacher should have a clear idea of what his context is and what sport fits better according to the characteristics of the class and the objectives that he wants to achieve.