What are Minor Games? | Primary Physical Education | Sport Lessons

Mar 20, 2024

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Kas Pillay

Want to know what is one of the most overlooked and underutilised categories of games in Physical education? Yep, the title gives it away… Minor Games!

As defined by NSW Gov, ‘Minor games are simple games with few rules, designed to allow students to practise skills in a challenging situation’. Minor games are important entry points for students to develop fundamental movement skills and generally sport competency prior to learning more complex sports and games.

Minor games also allow you to break down games so you can focus on specific components that may be useful to address when trying to observe students for an assessment on specific skills.

Here are some amazing ways you can use minor games in your lessons to ensure more engagement, student success and variety in what you are currently doing.

Minor Game Examples?

The easiest way to describe minor games other than just ‘simple games’, is to think of them as games that are not major general sports (Basketball, AFL, Netball). Minor games are activities that are generally done with Primary-age students to engage them in physical activity, serve as a warm-up to a more complex task or as an activity to help them develop a range of fundamental movement skills.

Below is a small list of examples of minor games and I will also attach a link to a great site that has a range of Minor games that you can use for 1 or 2 classes at a time in a gym space.

-      Rob the nest

-      Two Ball Soccer

-      Kick Ball

-      Builders and Bulldozers

-      Tag Games

-      Number Soccer/netball/ basketball  

Why Are They So Important? 

Minor games are an important entry point when preparing students for more complex games. The limited rules and basic structure of the games, make it accessible for all abilities and provide a foundation for you to build on the student’s current skills. Over time adding more complexities to challenge students. If you introduce students to a very complex sport when it’s not developmentally appropriate for them, they can become overwhelmed, start to become hesitant to participate and it will start to diminish their own self-belief and ability in P.E lessons. Students need to be able to find success in each lesson to ensure they are engaged, having fun and build a desire to continue to learn in a P.E environment. Kids need to love P.E to thrive in P.E!

A great example and one that I’m currently teaching my Year 3 and Year 4 students is the game category of ‘Invasion Games’. As we know this is a complex category of games, which includes sports such as basketball, soccer, netball and touch football. All very popular sports but with a high technical demand and complex rule systems.

How can one start to introduce students into this important category of sport, but meet them at a level that they are ready to participate at? ……With Minor Games !!    

I’ve been using the minor game ‘Capture the Flag’ with students. A game where there are two teams, each trying to invade the other team’s area in order to collect a flag. Teams need to think of being defensive and offensive which is the foundation of essentially all invasion games. This minor game is not only enjoyable for the students, it also allows every student to be active and participate at the same time as this game does not have a central ball handler or one person dominating the action. Each player has a role and has the ability to attack or defend at any moment of the game. They need to make a decision based on what’s happening in the game as to what position they should be in that moment in time (Attacker or defender).

Once students start to become proficient at this game, I will make the rules more complex and continue to build on the rule sets until it becomes very close to a specific Invasion Game ‘Major Game’ like basketball. Through these minor games we can discuss the same tactical and technical skills that are required to be effective in our minor game which will then transfer over to when students are ready to undertake more complex Invasion games later in their schooling.

Another important thing about Minor games is that it allows you to isolate specific skills you are looking for when students are being assessed on their FMS. Using our previous example, if we are playing capture that flag our focus skills may be:

  • Locomotor Skills (Running, Leaping, Jumping, dodging)
  • Stability Skills (Turning, Balance, Stopping)
  • Tactical Skills: Scanning the field of play (Defence)
  • Looking for gaps in the field (Offense)

These are a lot of examples but if you were to pick just a handful, you could discuss these focus areas with your students and then observe them all at once in a game of capture the flag. These skills will be easy to see as students don’t have a wide range of things they need to do to display them, they don’t need to get a hold of a ball like other invasion games, and they don’t have fixed positions or specific areas where they need to be and they don’t need to wait for other players or team. They are all playing all at once and in a game free of restrictions and technical requirements, this allows them to reveal and only utilise the skills they are being assessed on.

In a game like a basketball, students may have great tactical understanding of what needs to be done but if they don’t have good technical skills like dribbling or catching or their team has dominant players, it becomes more challenging to find opportune moments to observe them for assessment. At this young age group, a major invasion game like basketball would have way too many complex components for a game to go smoothly enough for each student to engage successfully.

How to use Minor Games in your lessons?

The best way to start is to pick either a category of games (read here about game categories) or a set of focus skills you wish to assess, then investigate minor games that involve those focus areas.

Pick a range of minor games for a unit and the minor games played at the end should be more complex than the ones at the start. Allowing progression and skill development throughout your unit of work. Of course, this is just a guideline and depending on the year level and age of students you will need to use your professional judgement to deem what minor games will be appropriate.

Minor games can also be used as a warmup for other activities and can also be a tool for you to use at the start of your units to get a gauge on student ability. This will provide you with some initial data as to where you can go in this unit and what level would be appropriate to start at to ensure students are challenged but can still be successful in the lesson.

Here are a list of great sites that I highly recommend to get some activities on minor games:

Click here to read an article on some other amazing resources for you to get Minor and Major Games from, including some awesome visuals for your P.E Lessons!  

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