PHE Class Grade 1/2

by daleencreally · October 15, 2025

Grace and I taught two PHE classes at two different elementary schools in Cranbrook. We had prepared a Halloween themed PE class with a warm up activity called “Trick or Treat” and 4 stations: candy corn crab walk, witches hat ring toss, haunted hula hooping and eye ball (basketball) bouncing. Our cool down involved everyone getting a glow stick and we had a glow-in-the-dark ball that we passed around the circle to reflect on what we loved (treats) and wished could have happen (tricks) for the PHE class. Overall, we had a strong lesson plan that really flowed and was full of movement and skill development.

Our first class went okay. The kids arrived about 10 minutes after our gym start time because they had gym scheduled right after recess and it took time for them to get their shoes changed and lined up etc. They also had a TTOC because their classroom teacher was in a meeting during gym time. The kids were a little excited and rambunctious, understandably. With less gym time we had to cut down all our times — so the trick or treat game was shorter and each of the stations only lasted for 3 minutes. We also didn’t have time to make it to everyone in the cool down reflection circle. Looking back, I think we could have done some laps around the gym and gone straight to stations to have more time for that part. We also could have pivoted and done something different for the cooldown, maybe a stretching circle?

Our second experience went much smoother. We had a second Grade 1/2 class and although they were a few minutes late the classroom teacher arranged that we would have our full 30 minutes. We were able to facilitate our whole lesson plan and had some strategic back-up from the teacher with management of behaviours. It’s really difficult when you don’t know the kids’ names to call them out on anything. The students were mostly engaged in the stations, although we did circulate throughout and make some suggestions if they were going “off script” from the instructions. For example, for the eyeball bouncing station, one of the boys was shooting hoops with his ball, which was not part of the station. He was easily redirected to what he was asked to do. Overall, the second experience went really, really well.

Grace and I worked really well together for this assignment. We divided up the instructions and responsibilities. We talked about ideas beforehand in case certain situations arose. We were prepared and had all our supplies, including our station signs. We arrived early to set up each time and made sure that clean up was done properly. One thing we did switch up from our initial share in our PHE class was that we changed out the spider web station for an eyeball bouncing station. The spider web station took too long to get ready and it was pretty similar to the ring toss, and we wanted more variety in skill development.

We learned a LOT. We learned about time crunches. We learned that classroom management is HUGE thing, even in the gym. We learned that sometimes you need to be flexible and that’s okay. We learned that kids love to have fun (although we already knew that!) and we learned that running a PHE class is super fun!