Inquiry in PE - Assessing Student Learning

This is a topic that I plan on visiting often in my blog and it's one that I struggled with in PE for my first year and a bit of teaching. Now, I finally feel that I've got my head wrapped around it...but I'm always looking to improve assessment tasks that I have in place.

When I arrived at my school, I wasn't sure how to go about teaching PYP PE, let alone assessing the students. The main means of assessing student learning at my school was a set of benchmarks/outcomes that were to be graded on a list at the end of the unit. I was told there were other things in place, like reflections, in the past but I went about creating my own in true over-achiever, early childhood teacher form anyway; after having taught in a school for 2 years prior with very, very limited resources, I was used to making my own rubrics and assessments from scratch. I still tend to use the benchmarks that are in place to guide my understanding of student progress, but I also think that linking to classroom units and by grading outside of the box, I get a better picture at the skills of students that may otherwise be overlooked...such as cooperation skills, leadership skills, risk-taking and other things that aren't just one-unit specific.

Some of the better unit assessments I've done (that are also more inquiry based) have allowed students time to come up with their own end of unit assessment tasks and gave them freedom to choose how they want to present their learning. For our dance units, students are given one or two lessons to work in groups to create their own routines that incorporate some of the moves we learned from dances we did throughout the unit. During performances, the class assesses the performing groups on criteria they think are important when performing and then the group self-assesses themselves as well; my role in assessing is just on overall effort (did they use the practice time wisely) and their audience behaviour. I also allow students to choose songs for warm-up activities (like 'musical statues') based on their behaviour and we listen to different types of music and reflect the way it makes us feel through movement. BUT, the best assessment task I have done to date was last year when my Grade 2 class completed their "Games" Unit.

We have just begun this unit for this year so I haven't seen the outcomes/final product of student learning yet, but I want to share the video I compiled last year for the students. Blogger wouldn't let me upload it directly, so I'm importing it from YouTube, where I uploaded it as an unlisted video. A big thanks to all the parents of these students who granted me permission to do this! I think it's a great example of inquiry in PE and consolidation of student learning...and best of all, the students LOVED doing it and still talk about it today! :)