Teaching Philosophy

 

When it comes to teaching elementary school children games and activities, my teaching philosophy would be to make sure to include an emphasis on a fun atmosphere, the importance of safety, and respect for one another.

I believe that it is important to include fun as a teaching philosophy in a child’s physical education class because it is important that kids learn how to interact with one another in a joyous atmosphere. Children can learn that games and activities, like in a physical education class, can be a fun time that they can interact with friends and also make new friends in the process. I also think that it is important to make sure children are having fun because children need to have that positive experience of playing games and activities at an early age. That positive experience that children have progresses on to becoming a positive memory for them. We need children to have positive memories such as having fun playing games and activities in physical education as they progress through school, so that these children will continue to be active throughout their lives and not be intimidated to participate in such activities.

I also believe that is important to include the importance of safety when teaching children games and activities because it allows for children to become aware of safety for not only themselves but for others as well. Having safety as a philosophy while playing games and activities teaches children boundaries of what is safe and not safe behaviour. By allowing children to realize and learn what safe behaviour is in games and activities, allows for the children to incorporate safe behaviour outside of the games and activities and into their everyday lives.

The third philosophy that I believe to be important when teaching games and activities to children is respect. I believe that by having children participate in games and activities with one another allows for children to learn how to interact with one another through teamwork. Children may come to realize that they may not like everyone on their team for a game or activity, but will realize that they still need to include one another and work together with everyone in order to succeed. This teaches children that they need to be kind to one another and not exclude people from participating. Also, with having a strong philosophy of respect, I believe respect becomes especially important when the children are actually participating in the games and activities. Children will need to learn through many games to respect other children and especially their personal space. For children, learning respect can be as simple as listening to their peers, following directions from the teacher or even playing the game fairly. Children could learn to respect each other’s space by learning how to properly tag each other in freeze tag or by passing the ball to everyone on their team in basketball. By learning respect for other people through games and activities that they play, children will learn behaviour that should be demonstrated toward others.