Inquiry in Physical Education

This is a photo of my classmates participating in a game known as “life boat” in my PED-244 class.

The activity in the picture was a cooperative activity. It was an activity that built community and developed communication skills. The object of the game was to help each member of your team to get to the life boat. The only instruction we were given was to save each member of our team from the sinking boat or area behind the yellow line and we had to get them into the boat or the bluw mat without touching the water (the floor) or the sharks would eat us. We were each supplied with a jump rope, a scooter and a boat (blue mat) and the rest was up to us.

During this activity I noticed that as my friend prepared to teach this cooperative activity to the class, she was trying to think of ways to tell the student how to save each other. Then I realized that this was a perfect example for inquiry and I shared with her my inquiry experiences from my education class and suggested to her that the activity would be much more educational if she would give the students a minimun amount of instruction and allow the students to find the solutions on their own. I was apart of the class and while I was participating in this activity I observed each group of students working together to solve the task. It was very intresting to see all the different techniques they created to solve the task.

I developed as an educator during this activity because after doing this activity I feel more capable of creating environments of inquiry and being able to recognize situations that can be used as inquiry. I also learned during this activity that inquiry is a very important tool to use while teaching students. I know that if the students would have been give specific instructions they would not have developed cooperative and communication skills. Because of this I will definitly include inquiry into my classrooms. That is why this post is published under the inquiry category.