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It is everyone\u2019s job, including PE teachers, to prepare students with the skills to succeed in today’s job market. Aside from math, literacy is the most fundamental skill any student needs to succeed in a global economy.<\/p>\nIt is everyone\u2019s job, including PE teachers, to prepare students with the skills to succeed in today’s job market. Aside from math, literacy is the most fundamental skill any student needs to succeed in a global economy.<\/p>\n
As times have changed, so too has the role of physical educators. My first physical education teaching job was in a very old and small Catholic private school. The school was virtually on an island surrounded by three streets and a shopping center\u2014and there was no gym.\u00a0 All I had to work with was a parking lot with a backdrop of a major discount thrift store and a small room with a big pole in the middle of it.\u00a0 If a soccer ball was kicked too hard, it would wind up in the street.\u00a0 To say it was ideal is a misnomer.<\/p>\n
I had been hired to replace the teacher who founded the physical education course at the school. The teacher was a bit old school. She recommended I do games like push cans with sticks to build fine motor skills. The equipment was severely lacking of anything modern. \u00a0My primary focus at the time was to modernize the program and teach sport skills. Fast forward to today and it is no longer just enough to teach sport skills.\u00a0 It is no longer enough to focus on physical skills alone.\u00a0 The new expectation, outside of a lifetime fitness-based approach to a physical education program, is the integration of common core subject areas into PE.<\/p>\n
These common core subjects are absolutely critical to the development of the whole child, which is why we must take this change of direction seriously.\u00a0 According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the average reading literacy score for fifteen-year-old U.S. students is 498 (out of 1000 possible points). \u00a0That\u2019s enough to make the United States\u00a0rank twenty-fourth<\/a>\u00a0out of the sixty-five educational systems ranked in that category.\u00a0 Not only are students in the U.S. not performing well internationally, but economically disadvantaged students are also struggling with drive, motivation, and engagement, according to the\u00a0Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.<\/p>\n Literacy used to be defined solely as knowing how to read and write. \u00a0According to the National Council of Teachers of English, literacy is defined differently in the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 In order to be considered literate, students must be able to:<\/p>\n In other words, students must be able to think critically, communicate, and reason. This is a major shift from just being able to read and write.<\/p>\n As physical educators it is now our responsibility to integrate components of literacy into our classrooms. This does not mean we become reading teachers\u2014that would be counter-intuitive. This means we take critical elements of the new definition of literacy and seamlessly integrate them into our daily teaching. We do this to not only support the holistic growth of the child, but also to help them obtain the knowledge needed to understand what a healthy life is and how to lead one.<\/p>\n If you think about it for a minute, this makes complete sense. Being able to live a healthy life takes a host of skills and abilities that literacy teaches. Students must first intellectually understand what it means to be healthy – this will take an understanding of both reading and writing. They must be able to obtain the proper help and information from others to live healthier lives – this takes communication. Then, they must be able to have intelligent conversations with others about being healthy – this takes accountable talk and reasoning. It is a process that happens over their K-12 experience, and each teacher plays their role in teaching different aspects of health-related information using literacy components.<\/p>\n Until now, I have written about the role literacy plays in a child\u2019s development, why it matters in physical education, and what literacy means in today\u2019s modern world. But what are you supposed to do with that information?\u00a0 How do you break it down into actionable steps to integrate literacy in a physical education classroom?<\/p>\n The short answer is that you are probably already doing some of the things you need to do. If you are doing the turn and talk strategy, exit cards, written assessments, task cards, and other similar activities, you\u2019re on the right path. The long answer is that you\u2019re probably not doing enough. Integrating literacy takes a thorough understanding of the literacy components, including what they are, how to teach them, and what they look like in the physical education classroom. Integrating literacy also means creating year-long lesson plans that seamlessly integrate all components into your physical education program on a daily basis. In some cases, this may mean a complete overhaul of how you\u2019re teaching.<\/p>\n Sound like a lot? It\u2019s not as complicated as it sounds. With the right guidance and proper tools, you can start integrating literacy into your activities in no time. In order to do that, you are going to want to find an easy course you can take on your own time and at your own pace. You want something that gives you a deeper understanding of the true impact integrating literacy has and the consequences if not done correctly. And you probably want a course that lays out the components in digestible bites that eventually guide you through developing your own literacy integration plans.<\/p>\n The good news is that such a course does exist and it can be found on PE Central, the premier health and physical education website.\u00a0 The course is called \u201cIntegrating Literacy into Physical Education: Why It Matters and How to Do It\u201d<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a self-paced course that covers all of the aforementioned information you will need to know in order to find true success in integrating literacy into your physical education classroom. You get 15 continuing education hours for taking the course, and you can even earn college credit. Plus, you have an instructor who is an expert in the field guiding you along the way.<\/p>\nLiteracy in a Modern World<\/h2>\n
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What does this new definition mean for physical educators?<\/h2>\n
How to Take Action<\/h2>\n
Online PD Course –\u00a0Integrating Literacy into Physical Education<\/h2>\n
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![\"literacy](\"http:\/\/ssww-blog.s3.amazonaws.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Charles-Silberman-Summer-Camp-Icebreakers-232x300.jpg\")
Charles Silberman is a physical education and health teacher with 14 years of teaching experience. He has become a leader and advocate for incoming physical educators by running workshops on teaching in limited space at staff in-services and conferences, assisting with new teacher orientations, and other initiatives. He has experience writing curriculum from scratch and writing published information specific to physical education in state and nationally recognized publications and websites. Charles\u00a0has also created a niche as a physical education specialist who fuses technology and primary instructional subjects into physical education lessons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"