It is already nearly November and I have been meaning to share some of the new units that we are working on at my school. I have been fortunate to have a young and dynamic new teacher join our small department. He is from New Zealand (yes a huge rugby fan) and after a small discussion on how to approach movement composition with our year 5 boys (many have only had one or two years of PE in their lives and most have the same amount of experience at creating movement), we decided that their first task would be to create their own Haka. Three lessons in, the boys love it and as I saw many of the students come into the PE office to watch the Haka of last week’s World Cup final, I knew that a great cultural learning experience was taking place as many of the boys had probably never viewed a rugby game before.
After inspiration from an OCC discussion, for our grade 8s, we are starting to develop a movement unit based on Martial Arts. As one of our goals is to enhance relationships with the local community, we hope to invite local teachers from various disciplines to introduce the way their sport combines movement.
