Promoting Physical Fitness, Grades 9-12
Classroom Resources that Reinforce the Benefits of Physical Fitness
Get active, stay fit and have fun doing it with sports, games, and activities described in the following lesson plans and resources.
Lesson Plans
The Playground Workout: How to Play Children's Games and Lose Fat, Build Amazing Conditioning, and Maybe Just Feel Young Forever
Students in grades 3-12 can get fit with two workouts comprising four exercises developing coordination, speed, and endurance. Good for circuit training.
Orienteering Scavenger Hunt
Students in grades 6-12 use a compass to reach multiple checkpoints.
Discovery Pacing
Students in grades 6-12 work with a partner to discover strategies for pacing themselves when running longer distances.
Ultimate Sponge Ball
Students in grades 7-12 play in teams of 4-8 to move a sponge ball to the opposing side’s goal.
Lesson Plan Collections
PE Central: Lesson Plans for Physical Education Teachers
A collection of more than 2000 K-12 health and physical education lessons and assessment ideas.
Games Kids Play
This site gives instructions for hundreds of outdoor activities. Included are traditional games and jump rope rhymes.
Playground games in England
Some of these playground games are familiar. Some like Conkers and Please Mr. Crocodile are not.
Cooperative Games: The Ultimate Camp Resource
72 games that encourage teamwork and active participation from everyone.
Background Resources
Modern Sports History including Culture the Beginnings and Major Events
Sports History
Field and Court Dimensions, History, Rules and How To Information for a variety of sports.
History of Sports: A Quick History of Sports
Hockey, football, basketball, tennis. the Olympics, and ancient sports.
Streetplay.com: Stickball, handball, spaldeens, and more!
Documents city games. Includes galleries of photographs.
Teaching Resources
A space for teachers to share free learning materials including lesson plans, activities, games, teaching ideas and worksheets. This UK site requires free registration.
A Short-term Longitudinal Study of Children’s Playground Games in Primary School: Implications for Adjustment to School and Social Adjustment in the USA and the UK (17 pages, 108 KB)
This study examined the nature of boys’ and girls’ games and the role of games in children’s adjustment to school and social adjustment during the first year of primary
school.
Tools
Today in Sport
Events, birthdays and deaths in sport for every day in history from a wide variety of sports.
Sports Coaching Skills
Videos and animations demonstrate 1,000s of coaching drills. Free membership and registration for individual sports.
- Sports Rules
- Sport Dictionary - Sports Terms and Definitions
- Sports Nutrition
- A Guide to Eating for Sports
- Sports Nutrition Guidelines for the Vegetarian
Books
Find these materials online:
Cross-Curricular Connections with Sports
Books connecting sports to other disciplines for students in grades 2-12.
Sports Encyclopedia North America
Edited by John D. Windhausen
Sports in North America. A Documentary History
Find these reading materials at your school or local library:
- Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Dueling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, and Pretending
By Iona and Peter Opie
Floris Books (January 2009) - Children's Games with Things: Marbles, Fivestones, Throwing and Catching, Gambling, Hopscotch, Chucking and Pitching, Ball-Bouncing, Skipping, Tops and Tipcat
By Iona and Peter Opie
Oxford University Press, USA (April 23, 1998) - The Lore of the Playground: One Hundred Years of Children's Games, Rhymes and Traditions
By Steve Roud
Random House UK (November 1, 2010) - The New Games
By New Games Foundation
Main Street Books (September 8, 1976) - More New Games
By New games Foundation
Main Street Books (September 9, 1981) - Best New Games
By Dale Lefevre
Human Kinetics; 1 edition (November 5, 2001) - Kick the Can, and over 800 Other Active Games and Sports for All Ages
By Darwin Hindman
Pearson Prentice Hall (March 1978)
Multimedia
- Children’s Games: Complete Painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1560)
- Children's Games: Details from Pieter Brueghel's Painting (circa 1560)
- Opie Collection of Children's Games and Songs
Audio recordings of familiar and unfamiliar children's games and songs. - Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (1380 minutes)



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