Thinking about warm-ups differently! | Physical Education
Sep 8, 2024
Kas
Warming up is a fundamental part of each P.E. lesson, it is an important part in injury prevention and serves as a way for students to ease into the active nature of P.E. as they transition from sitting down for most lost lessons into moving.
In the context of a P.E. lesson ups are typically the first activity students do prior to a main game or sports, this start of the lesson generally takes 5-10 minutes. This first activity generally includes games that have simple rules, and not a great deal of equipment and create maximum participation from each individual. A good example of a warm-up game would be activities such as tag-based games.
A warm-up game can also be something that is done for many lessons, a quick activity that may be a class favourite which takes little time to explain but allows students to get straight into physical activity. When I find a good warmup game, I generally use it on many occasions. This also allows students to become familiar and competent in these games rather than having to increase their cognitive load by learning a new warm-up game each lesson in addition to a new main activity or sport. The age-old saying ‘Less is more’ when it comes to the start of your P.E lesson.
This article won’t touch on the scientific aspects and benefits of a warmup but rather look at ways you can implement warmups in your lesson to serve different learning goals and intentions.
Minor Games
What are minor games? Read my full in-depth description of these games and why they are so valuable in every teacher’s repertoire. To summarise, minor games are simple games that focus on a few key skills opposed to sports and games that have complex rules and positions. Minor games can be used as stand-alone activities for lessons but are also great as warm-up games.
Minor games are a great way to start your lesson as you can use it as an entry point to a more complex game which you plan to teach your students later in the lesson. An example of this would be to play the minor game ‘End-Zone’, which is a passing game where students need to move the ball from one end of the court to the other without dribbling or running with the ball.
This is a great warm-up game because it is simple to understand, does not require students to understand different positions or rules and the goal of the game is very simple. This game can then be modified to make it closer to a sport such as basketball or netball. Thus, you are using this warm-up game to ease students into a more complex game, breaking down the learning into manageable smaller games.
Minor games are a great warm-up tool for older students as they tie in their warmup into the next part of their lesson. These games are easily modifiable as you can make them more challenging just by adding in different equipment or some minor rule changes.
GLO (Games of Low Organisation)
GLO’s similar to minor games are simple games that are very simple to understand and do not have many components of pieces of equipment. GLO’s are more suited for younger year levels and students as they are one step down from minor games in terms of the understanding needed in order for students to be successful in this style of games.
Examples of GLO’s are:
- Tag Games
- Simple Throwing/ Target Games
- Throwing and Catching Games
- Stuck in the mud
- Fundamental movement skill games, running, hopping and jumping
These are great warm-up games especially if you are low on resources or are limited in playing spaces. Like minor games, they can be modified to suit the needs of your students and can be made more complex if students feel the need to be challenged. Due to the simple nature of these games, they can be great teaching tools to allow your students to focus on specific skills and to develop them in a game context. If you want your students to learn how to dodge and jump, you can teach them a tag game and then discuss the keys to successful dodging and jumping. Students can then contextualise the learning in a simple game that allows them to focus on just those skills rather than a wide range of skills. That’s the beauty of GLO’s.
Self-Directed Warm-up
This warm-up is a student favourite and has been my go-to start to the lesson especially when teaching students in upper primary and high school. Self-directed warm-ups allow students to not be confined by the regular rules of a lesson and give them autonomy in how they spend the first few minutes of their P.E. lesson. There is plenty of data out there that student-centred learning and student autonomy increase engagement and learning outcomes for a wide range of reasons. To put it simply, kids very much like most adults don’t like being told what to do, who to do it with and how it should be done.
A self-directed warm-up gives students the freedom to warm up with a group or pair of their choice, Using the equipment appropriately, warming up how they would like- whether that’s a game, the individual activity of a walk or talking with a peer it is their choice. I find that when I allow students the freedom to warm up how they choose (with the equipment I provide them with) they all participate and rarely if ever do I have any student complaints or issues.
The issues generally arise when students are working with someone who they don’t get along with or when undertaking an activity they don’t enjoy. This warm-up style has a few massive benefits that I encourage you to consider.
It allows students to develop the skill of being self-directed. This means that they are asked to not ask the teacher numerous questions or seek too much guidance, it is on them to be independent and use the simple constraints that are provided to them, to warm up effectively and then pack up what they have used in time for the next part of our lesson. It becomes a reward, if students are not able to handle this responsibility appropriately, then they will be partnered up and be asked to complete a warm-up activity that is not of their choice.
A self-directed warm-up also creates a mutual understanding of fairness between myself and my students. I also talk to them that in our P.E. lesson, due to the nature of the sports and activities we learn I cannot always guarantee that they will work with students they get along with or participate in games they will always love. This is okay as this is a huge part of the learning and social/emotional development of the student. What I can do though is provide them with this self-directed warm-up at the start of the lesson to allow them to be able to have some choice in what they do and whom they do it with for a component of the lesson. This resonates with students and reduces a lot of the issues that you would normally have when partnering up with students later in the lesson.
When students are being self-directed and warming up independently, this allows me time to set up our next game, check in on individual students or work 1 on 1 with other students to build their confidence in the upcoming movement challenges/ activities or just to build a relationship with specific students. Due to the nature of the P.E. subject area, you are not always able to work with students on a one-to-one basis, this warm-up tool is a great way to do that without impacting the rest of the class.
C.R.A.F.T Time
CRAFT time is another great warm-up tool for students of all ages but works really well for high school-aged students. When teaching a sport to a class, there will be students who will need to work on different aspects of that sport. For example, when teaching a unit softball, there will be students in the class who need to work on their throwing and catching, some of their fielding and students who need to develop their striking. In a lesson, there is only so much opportunity for students to work on developing the skills they need to as the learning intentions a generally there for whole class development rather than on the needs of one individual. In a game of softball students only get a limited opportunity to develop each skill component as they will rotate from fielding to striking.
A great way to solve this dilemma is to provide students time at the start of the lesson to be independent and to work on/warm-up practising the specific skills they wish to develop. Students will be provided with all the equipment and the space, then it is up to them to find peers and to go work on the individual skills they need to them to find success during the game/ lesson.
This is a much better use of your warm-up time for students and keeps the whole lesson focused on the common learning intentions rather than just participating in a warmup for the sake of it. Older students also enjoy this independence and this increases engagement as students will only select things to work on they generally want to do. This can carry over into some informal observations/assessments as you will observe what skills students choose to work on, seeing if they can effectively assess their past performances and address areas they need to improve on.
This article shows just a handful of ways to facilitate warm ups and also how you can look at this part of your lesson in a different way. As P.E teachers we have a short amount of time for students to get the most out of their learning, incorporating intentional warmups like these mentioned will enhance the learning experience for your students and also translate to better outcomes across the board.