Lesson Planning Production and Assessment in Physical Education - Child`s Play?

Background: According to the literature, many teachers do not plan their lessons systematically. Yet teachers who do plan and regularly assess them are four times more likely to produce quality lessons in which learning takes place. Lesson planning is an issue in all school subjects yet for physical education (PE) significant differences arise. It may seem `easy` for PE teachers to improvise activities from various sports but with no structured process, such activities cannot be assessed to ensure that learning took place.

Training PE students to be teachers is more complex than teacher education in other subjects because of PE`s multi-disciplinary nature, which requires mastery of many fields. Essentially, most PE students are exposed to only a few of the subjects during their teacher education process and lack the necessary content knowledge in the other subjects necessary for planning.

Aim: To create a systematic model for teaching lesson planning and assessment in order to assist PE students in planning lessons that are more effective and qualitative. The model should also serve them later on as teachers.

Model: A model using the Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach is produced as a final project. This serves as a scaffold that will facilitate independent lesson planning in the future. The project includes planning an annual curriculum and developing one full teaching unit. This project coalesces the cumulative knowledge amassed about planning during the teacher education process.

The final project entails a variety of sub-tasks according to the Learning toward Mastering principle. It must be completed before the pedagogical adviser gives final approval.

The project stages are as follows:

1. A prerequisite – writing a professional credo in Physical Education which must be illustrated during the project.
2. Gathering needed data and information about the learners and the conditions required for planning.
3. Using the official curriculum and compulsory sources – to select the objectives
4. Based on stages (a) and (b), submitting a broad program including a rationale, and an expanded teaching unit of 24 lessons including means for assessment.
5. Defending the plan in front of a team of peers for feedback, using a personal poster that includes the main points of the project.
6. Discussion and summary of the insights and recommendations in a class discussion.

In summary, the stages presented here include independent work and feedback from peers and the pedagogical adviser, until mastery of the project is attained.