It all started with basketball. My school loves playing basketball, so I purposely enticed them with something they already loved. I had this idea of manipulating how many points someone scores when they make a basket to highlight the power structures of different government types. After playing and testing the initial prototype, the students loved it because it was an interactive way of experiencing the concepts of government systems. Playing with the concepts from Governments Basketball acted as a supercharger for understanding and comprehension mainly because it was a game, which inherently is fun. That's the beauty of integrated PE: leveraging fun into learning.
Several weeks ago, I posted a lesson plan for Governments Basketball to the blog because I wanted everyone who had previously downloaded it to have the most current version. I added a federation as a government type and cleaned up some rule explanations along the way. You can find that blog post here if you are interested. Additionally, I had a government hockey version designed as a low barrier of entry for younger students just learning the fundamentals of stick handling and hitting with hockey sticks. This got me thinking about how many other sports could work using the Government Sports scoring system. It seemed to be a concept with lots of applications, so this year, I put many more versions to the test, and the results were fantastic.
My upper elementary class started the new year with government studies. It was the perfect time to experiment with other sports to see whether the government-style scoring would hold up. We started with basketball since it is tried and true. Still, after that week, we continued with the same scoring system but applied a new sport each week while they were studying governments in their classroom. Not surprisingly, soccer was an easy fit for applying the scoring strategies. It required very little change to how the game was played; it only altered how points were scored based on the student's role. The following week, we played two-hand touch football to the delight of the students who play it every day at recess.
Because of the number of students I have in a typical gym class, I decided to split them into four teams and had a mini-bracket tournament. Each team represented a different government and played a ten-minute game against each other for three games total. The scoring was modified so that the role of the quarterback and the receiver who caught the ball for the touchdown were summed for the point total. Splitting the class into four and having simultaneous games increased the number of chances and touches each student got during PE. At recess, we try not to interfere too much with how they play because recess is their time, and the less intervention from adults, the better. Obviously, we are still keeping them safe. However, at recess, the better students at football get many more opportunities to interact with the ball, whether as the quarterback or receiver. Less skilled players get fewer touches, which means fewer opportunities to learn and improve. So, to change that dynamic so everyone could learn football in PE, I made the mini-teams, which give more players opportunities by reducing the total number of options per team.
Finally, I tested kickball with the government style, which was successful by manipulating the scoring structure and how many outs a player gets. I tested t-ball and softball with other classes, and it worked just as well. The Government scoring system, as well as the outs system, added depth to the strategies of the game. Depending on the role of the student, the number of points they scored per run was also reflected in the number of outs they earned when they got a player out by-catch, tag, peg, or force-out. This encouraged teams to use directional hitting on offense to avoid the powerful players of the other government type.
An unintended but very two-hand touch football in PE was that a whole new group of students who would not play football during recess began playing in the big group games. Because they now understood the rules and had some success in PE class, it gave them the confidence to try it out at recess. Additionally, the students at recess welcomed the new players because they saw how well they played in PE and knew they would not have to use recess time to explain the game. One class even split its playing area into two sections: one for co-ed soccer and the other for girls' football!
I will keep the government's basketball and hockey individual lessons area, but I have created a new government sports lesson plan that includes lesson plans for soccer, two-hand touch football, kickball, basketball, and hockey. This new bundle is in the lesson collection area. Teaching government systems with sports enhances your students' understanding and comprehension of different government systems, and it is an effective way to introduce a variety of sports to your students as well.