Middle School PE Lesson Ideas

August 30, 1998
Copyright © 1998, PE Central

Typically, middle/high school teachers have students sit in squad lines after dressing for PE. This format makes it convenient to take roll and organize students into teams, etc. Unfortunately, this practice can eat up time in which students could be active, warming up, or mentally preparing for a lesson. The following is a suggested outline for a middle or high school lesson that may be helpful to those in certain teaching situations or conditions. It is understood that this may not work in all situations and environments.

Lesson Plan Suggestions

Students will often times straggle in from changing in the locker rooms, therefore a traditional instant activity at this time may be highly ineffective. Have some simple tasks for the students to do that may be interesting to them, and can be done alone or in twos or threes. You can take roll as students straggle in, and be ready for a traditional instant activity when the bell rings as all students are supposed to be in the gym by a certain time or by the bell.

Have volleyballs out and ready to go. Put instructions on the wall that go something like this:

Please take a ball and practice your forearm bump to yourself. Focus on the cues: elbows locked, hands together, and thumbs pointed at the floor. They are posted on the wall just in case you forget. Find a spot on the wall and see how many consecutive bumps you can get to hit this spot (may want to put targets up). If you feel successful with this find one or two other people and go for a record bumping back and forth. Use only bumps, any other kind of hit and you must start over on your record.

Sit down facing a partner quickly. Clasp wrists and see if you can pull each other up at the same time. Find another pair and see if you can pull 4 up at one time. If you get 4, go to 8, etc.

You will notice that this activity has nothing to do with volleyball. This part of the lesson may or may not relate to the lesson focus which is coming up next. These activities tend to motivate and energize the class, and usually take 2-3 minutes.

You have your students where you want them now. Thus, it is time for a set induction to engage their minds in your lesson.

Do you remember watching volleyball in the Olympics this summer. What is one of the most exciting ways that players scored points in the Olympic Volleyball games? That's right, spiking! Today we are going to learn how to spike the volleyball so that we too can score this way.

The next part of your lesson is: The lesson focus!

Planning the lesson focus is very much like developing an elementary lesson plan. You have a skill that you would like to focus on and teach for the day. Teach one cue at a time and keep a brisk pace so that students do not become bored. A bored middle school student can become your worst nightmare in a hurry. Take this into account by having numerous application tasks, refinement cues, and extensions of tasks. Shoot for middle of the road, and vary the tasks to meet the needs of the more and less skilled.

On the next page you will find an example of this in a format that should look very familiar to you. It is by no means complete, but gives you an idea of how this might be approached at this level. A highly skilled student might go through these 5 in 2-3 minutes, whereas a less skilled individual may continue to work their way up to application #2 in 5 minutes.

This segment of the lesson focus should have a brisk pace. You may only want to spend 5-10 minutes in this phase of the lesson (of course this is dependent upon what you are teaching and how the students are doing).

The next part of the Lesson Focus should be more game like. The games that students play should allow for maximal practice opportunities and focus on the cues learned in the prior phase of the lesson. These may be self, partner, small, or large group activities. Remember, large group activities lend themselves more to social comparisons, and also make it more difficult to give individual feedback regarding performance. The following is an example of how we might continue our spiking lesson.

In the middle of the gym, you have already set up numerous standards with a slanty rope (or net) between them (4 feet up to approx. 7 feet). Have students get in groups of 3-4 and get across the net from another group of 3-4. Each person gets a low density foam ball (very light weight) the size of a volleyball. The object of the game is to practice your volleyball spike over the slanty rope and try to hit the opposing team with your spike. You may spike the ball from any point on the rope. If you get hit with a spike, run to the wall, pick up a volleyball, practice 3 spikes to the wall, put the ball back down and run back to the game.

A spike that does not go over the rope cannot get you out.

Any spike that is not hit with an open hand cannot get you out.

Depending on how this activity is going you may play it for 5-10 minutes.

The effectiveness of your lesson will depend on what the students have learned. You need to know what they have learned because this will guide the development of your next lesson plan. You want to meet your students where they are at. Many middle and high school programs are strictly into performance assessment (how well the students can perform the actual skill). These types of assessment are fine, but I suggest that you add a cognitive component to your assessment.

The team that you were on for spiking dodge ball is your group for this assessment. You are the commentators for the gold medal finals of the Olympic games in Atlanta (men's or women's - your choice as a group). Create a 2-3 minute segment which will tell the viewing audience that you really know your stuff about spiking. Focus on the cues that we learned in class today (hit with open hand, hitting elbow high, break wrist down over the ball, jump straight up, etc.). You may just be a team of analysts, or you may have some footage of some Olympic players in your segment, the choice is yours. Have fun with this, but make sure to let the viewing audience know that you really know your stuff. We will video these segments at the beginning of class tomorrow.

The final phase of your lesson is closure.

Have the students help you bring in the equipment and get it set for the next class. This should be extremely quick. Bring all students together and remind them of what is happening tomorrow, or things that they need to think about from the lesson today. Ask any questions you would like of them regarding the lesson or future activity (tomorrow), and then let them go.

Everyone stop what you are doing and gather all of the equipment into the bins. Please come over here when you are finished. Go!

Today we worked on spiking, and tomorrow we will learn what you have learned in class today. As I went around and watched and listened to you develop you commentator sketches I think that you have learned quite a lot today about spiking. Remember when you do these tomorrow. The first whole group in the gym tomorrow will get to go first. The rest of you can practice your sketches when you come into the gym. Have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow.

As the class is breaking up and heading for the locker room you can have any one on one conversations with students that you think are necessary, these don't have to be negative or punitive. You may just want to get to know a student better, or you noticed something different about their behavior today (positive or negative) and just want to check to see if things are OK.