My Top 5 Tips for Teaching English During Physical Education
After a few months teaching English through physical education (PE) classes in a Spanish primary school, I have some advice for fellow teachers and English language teaching assistants. At first glance, it might not seem easy to incorporate English lessons into PE class, but in my experience, teaching English during PE works quite well!
As an auxiliar de conversación, I teach English in a bilingual primary school. While some auxiliares teach English during traditional English language classes, I do not. Rather, I teach English through other classes including natural sciences, social studies, music, and—you guessed it—physical education.
When I first got assigned to a few physical education classes, I thought: How am I supposed to teach English during PE? Off the top of my head, I could only think of a couple of games that involve English words. Wouldn’t those games get a bit old and repetitive?
Pretty soon after I started teaching English through physical education, I realized it would be one of my favorite classes to teach. In my experience, students tend to be more engaged when playing games in general, and PE adds a physical element that not only keeps students focused but also tires them out!
Now that I’ve taught English PE classes to first, second, and third grade elementary school students for a few months, I have a lot of recommendations for new teachers. In this post, I share my top five tips for teaching English during PE classes.
1. Use English when warming up.
Warm up activities offer fantastic opportunities to speak English with students. I use English when instructing students through the warm up movements, and I ask my students to repeat after me.
The warm ups my students use include moving and/or rotating various parts of the body. Over the course of the year, you can use warm up activities to solidify your students’ knowledge of body parts, as well as right vs. left and backward vs. forward.
Once your students have heard you say the warm up exercises and repeated after you during several physical education classes, you can even invite students to lead the warm up! That way, all of the students will get a chance to practice recalling the English words you used.
2. Describe the rules to the games using English—and gestures.
This one might seem obvious, but a great way to incorporate the English language during PE class is to describe the rules to whatever game you’ll be playing that day in English. When you do this, be sure to use lots of gestures to ensure maximum comprehension.
After explaining the rules—or part of the rules if the game is complex—ask your students what they understood. Depending on their English proficiency, they can respond in English or in their first language. I allow my first, second, and third grade students to reply in Spanish, which also helps the students who have greater difficulty with English.
In fact, I teach some students with very high English conversation competencies, as the bilingual primary school where I teach is located within a highly international town. So I find that asking these students to explain the rules to the PE games in Spanish is a great way 1) to engage these English speakers who often find English classes to be a bit boring and 2) to ensure the English language learners fully understand the rules to the game.
However you ensure your students understand you (by using gestures, by translating what you said, etc.), speaking English while explaining the rules to physical education games is a useful way to incorporate more English into your PE classes.
3. Play listening games.
Naturally, listening games work very well for practicing English during physical education class. In these games, the students must listen to the teacher who speaks a word or more in English. Based on what the teacher said, the students will have to complete an action.
I also like to use English listening games for primary school PE classes, because they require the students to be quiet. In addition to providing time for students to hear more English, these games offer opportunities to remind your students not to speak out of turn during class.
Now, I’ll give you some examples of English listening games for PE.
Simon Says:
The students stand in a line.
The teacher gives the students a movement-based instruction, either after they say “Simon says” or not.
If the instruction comes directly after “Simon says,” the students must follow the instruction. But if the teacher does not say “Simon says” before the instruction, the students must NOT follow the instruction. The students who get this wrong are eliminated. (I also play a version where the students who yell or make a lot of noise are eliminated, too. This helps keep the noise level down so I don’t have to yell.)
Continue until there is one student (or two or three students, depending on your energy level) left. That student wins!
Groups:
The students stand in a line.
The teacher gives the students a movement-based instruction, either after they say “Simon says” or not.
If the instruction comes directly after “Simon says,” the students must follow the instruction. But if the teacher does not say “Simon says” before the instruction, the students must NOT follow the instruction. The students who get this wrong are eliminated. (I also play a version where the students who yell or make a lot of noise are eliminated, too. This helps keep the noise level down so I don’t have to yell.)
Continue until there is one student (or two or three students, depending on your energy level) left. That student wins!
Touch That Color:
The teacher says the name of a color in English (i.e. purple, red, blue, etc.).
The students must find an object of that color and touch it.
That’s it! It’s a pretty simple and easy physical education game. To make it more complex, you can eliminate the last student to touch an object of that color.
Connect:
Students get into pairs. (If there’s a group of three, that’s okay, too.)
The teacher instructs the students to move around the field/room in a certain way (i.e. walk around on tip toes, jump on one leg, walk very slowly, etc.). The students must walk far away from their partners.
The teacher says a part of the body (i.e. elbow, knee, fingers, etc.), and the students have to find their partners and connect those body parts. For instance, if the teacher says “elbow,” each pair must touch elbows. The last pair to do so is eliminated.
Continue this way until there are two pairs left. With the last two pairs, the teacher splits these students into the four corners of the field/room. When the students are ready, the teacher says a part of the body, and the students must run to connect body parts. The first pair to do so correctly wins!
Fruits and Vegetables:
Split the students into two teams. The students on one team are “fruits,” and the students on the other team are “vegetables.”
Put the teams in lines about two meters apart in the middle of the field/room. (The fruits should be in one line, and the vegetables should be in the other line.)
The teacher says the name of a fruit or vegetable.
If the teacher says a fruit, the fruits run forward try to tag the vegetables, and the vegetables turn around and try to get to the back of the field/room before being tagged by a fruit. (If the teacher says a vegetable, it’s vise versa—the vegetables chase the fruits, and the fruits run away.)
If students are tagged, they join the team that tagged them. For example, if a vegetable is tagged by a fruit, the vegetable becomes a fruit for the next round.
Play until you want to end the game. At that point, count the number of students on each team. The team with the most players wins.
3. Play games where the students speak a few English words.
Now that we’ve covered listening activities, let’s talk about speaking activities. Speaking games might not work as naturally as listening games for physical education class, but if you can find PE games that require the students to speak some English—even just a few words—that’s a huge win!
So far, I’ve only found one game that requires students to speak English: Sharks and Minnows. The good news is that this is definitely a fan favorite among my first, second, and third grade students!
Sharks and Minnows:
Assign two to four students to be the sharks. The rest will be minnows.
The minnows stand on one side of the field/room, and the sharks stand in the center.
The sharks say, “Minnows, minnows, come to my sea.”
The minnows run across the field/room and try to get to the other side without being tagged by the sharks. The sharks try to tag the minnows.
If a shark tags a minnow, the minnow becomes seaweed. As seaweed, the student must stand with their feet in one place, but they can use their arms to tag other minnows. If a seaweed tags a minnow, the minnow becomes another seaweed. (I love this version of sharks and minnows because all students get to stay involved until the end of the game.)
After how ever much time or how every many rounds the teacher wants, the game can end. At that point, the sharks win if there are more seaweed than minnows, and the minnows win if there are more minnows than seaweed.
5. Use English during stretching.
Just as you can use English during warm up exercises, you can speak English during cool down exercises like stretching. Describe the stretches in English, and ask your students to repeat after you.
Again, after a bit of practice as a group, you can invite students to take turns leading the stretching activities in English alongside you. That way, students will speak English aloud during PE class.
I hope you find my top five recommendations for using English during physical education class to be useful. Good luck with incorporating English into your own PE class!
If you’re looking for more resources for teaching English through PE, I have another blog post with my favorite physical education games for teaching English:
