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Pirate News is a presentation of Hart Public Schools in partnership with Oceana County Press.
By Allison Scarbrough, News Editor
HART — Spitler Elementary School teachers Danica Elder and Dean DeVries launched an action-based learning class this school year that focuses on teaching social and emotional skills through physical activity.
The class takes place daily during ‘first hour.’ They instruct a different grade level every week, and each day a different class from that grade participates.
The class combines Elder’s expertise in psychology and DeVries’s physical education skills. DeVries is the school’s physical education teacher, and Elder, who has a master’s degree in developmental psychology, is the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) instructor.
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“We wanted to blend what I do in PE with her background in social and emotional learning,” said DeVries.
The class offers the students “something active to start the day and then some social and emotional lessons to build life skills,” said Elder.
DeVries said he uses different PE activities to reinforce the lessons.
Right now, students are focused on improving their team work skills. As fourth graders sat together in a circle in the gym before engaging in their physical lesson Tuesday, March 10, they discussed with the two teachers some of the necessary components of teamwork, such as collaboration, compromise and cooperation.
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The active portion of the teamwork instruction involved playing Poison Ball. “How can we be a team in this instead of just working on our own?” asked DeVries, who is the Pirate varsity softball coach.
For Poison Ball, the students use Omnikim balls, which are oversized, lightweight balls. “Basically you and your partner move that ball around the gym; everybody is running away from you, and you’re trying to ‘poison’ them by hitting them with the ball. If they get hit, they have to go out and do an exercise to ‘get healthy’ again. If you and I are partners, trying to tag someone with the ball, you might have to move somewhere so I can pass it to you. So, they’re learning to pass. That’s a skill we have to learn in our team sports, which a lot of kids don’t understand — they want to score themselves.”
OCP photo/STEM teacher Danica Elder sits in a circle with fourth graders to discuss teamwork skills before they play “Poison Ball.”
“Classroom teachers don’t get to talk about teamwork a lot, and in PE we talk about it, but it’s not in-depth. It gives us a chance once a month to have a conversation about what it is and why we need it. It just creates a better environment for our kids.”
Controlling emotions, patience, goal setting, fair vs. equal and teamwork are topics the class has focused on so far this school year. Some of the activities in which they participated were monkey bars, ring toss, hula hoop and jump rope.
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“It’s been fun to have a common language, and the kids know what we’re talking about,” said Elder. “Kids will bring it up in different scenarios, like ‘fair vs. equal’ was kind of a huge one. We also get to see the kids in a different context than our class, which is good for relationship-building and connecting.”
“For patience, I conducted some PE stations where they had to wait in line,” said DeVries. “We had a conversation about what can we do if we’re stuck in line somewhere. Instead of getting our phones, is there something else we can do? The kids came up with ‘Eye Spy’ and ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ or just talking about a topic with somebody.
“I am seeing kids in a totally different light,” said DeVries. “Not only do we get to see some movement, but we get the behind-the-scenes piece of how their brains are working.”
OCP photo/PE teacher Dean DeVries discusses teamwork skills with the fourth graders.
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