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Friday, May 30, 2008

Year round adventure with Seabrook Middle School


Four years ago, Seabrook Middle School installed a low elements course in the woods on school grounds. Our challenge was to incorporate an adventure curriculum into the traditional curriculum offered in the physical education program. We began by introducing Full Value Contracts for students to identify and own behavior as responsible classmates. We post these contracts with names and handprints on the wall of the gym. Sometimes they are used as reminders during the school year.

We spend 4 weeks in the woods every fall working on cooperative challenges like the TP Shuffle, Whale Watch, Mohawk Walk, Nitro Crossing, and visiting island countries using the Nitro Crossing set up, or playing a strange game of basketball with rubber chickens, lizards, swing ropes and buckets. We ladder our curriculum by offering different challenges for different grade levels on the same elements. In this way, we are able to introduce elements and keep them fresh at the same time. We alternate our curriculum in the fall with lifetime sports like golf and field games like flag football. When weather sends us indoors we play cooperative games like Mat Ball and Castle Ball and participate in cooperative challenges such as the Human Knot or use Stepping Stones.

Our winter curriculum focuses on fitness using lifetime activities and stations, a traverse wall, and indoor game units like Table Tennis, Volleyball, and Basketball.

By the time spring rolls around, students (and PE teachers) are anxious to get outdoors again and play field games or head to the woods. We have found that students come back to the woods with a desire and earnestness to be successful in the challenges. The MultiVine, Wild Woosey, Tire Swing and Spider’s Web are big hits in the spring. Students are ready and willing to take on the responsibility of keeping their classmates safe and attaining a group goal. There are always struggles with middle school students: maturity and responsibility. But we see the excitement and pleasure that challenges bring to most students. The opportunity to guide students in appropriate ways to be leaders keeps us coming back to the elements year after year.


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Cindy Shoer is a Middle School PE teacher at Seabrook Middle School in Seabrook NH. Cindy has presented on the use of the core concepts of PA and alignment with standards for PE at PA's Practitioner's Seminars.

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