Physical Education Strategies

Information Organization

Flash Cards

Terms and definitions, concepts, and lists of information may be organized on flash cards. Examples of each of these are given below (D. Applegate, CAL).

Study Groups

Study groups may be used for a number of tasks in Physical Education courses (J. Scheltz, CAL).

Round Table

Students may meet as a group to ask and answer questions related to lecture content or reading material. In addition, members of the study group may share strategies related to note taking, memory, information organization, test preparation, and test taking.

Homework Completion

Homework assignments and worksheets may be completed by the group, or different problems may be divided among the members and answers shared in the group.

Self-Testing

Students may work in pairs or small groups to ask each other questions in preparation for exams.

Peer Teaching

Members of the study group may take turns "teaching" important material to other members of the study group, who ask questions of the "teacher."

Notes

Complete and accurate sets of notes from lecture or the readings may be compiled by members of a study group.

Memory Strategies

Physical education courses, due to their diverse nature, require that students master a variety of memory techniques. Several strategies are discussed here.

Physical Memory

Physical memory refers to remembering certain actions like administering to a broken limb, saving a drowning victim, or playing rugby. "Successful remembering of an action entails remembering the parts of the action and the precise sequence in which the parts are put together" (Herrmann, Raybeck and Gutman, 1993, p. 125). For actions that are performed regularly, simple practice often improves memory. Infrequently performed actions, on the other hand, are not amenable to practice; external aids such as those described below are most effective in this case.

Step-wise Documentation

• This manipulation involves breaking an action into discrete steps and documenting each step, usually in writing. Written documentation may take the form of notes or check lists. Oral documentation may be accomplished using tape recorders. Illustrations or diagrams of each step enhance the documentation. The growing popularity of video recorders makes visual documentation feasible as well.

Instruction Manuals

• Instruction manuals provide prerecorded documentation of the steps needed to accomplish a physical action.

Sports

• To remember athletic actions, make sketches of the movements using field markers (e.g. out-of bounds lines, nets, etc.) as reference points. The field markers act as external stimuli to trigger memory when performing the actual action.