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Moving your body is not only beneficial for your physical health, but has also been linked to improved memory and critical thinking skills. Oftentimes, school administrators, educators, parents, and students think of common classroom subjects separately from physical education (PE) class. If this mental separation between core classroom subjects, such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is removed, educators can find a seamless opportunity to enhance student learning experience and performance.
Physical Education STEM Activities offer students the opportunity for hands-on learning experiences that connect to real-world situations. In this article, we will review tips for incorporating STEM lessons into physical education curriculum, which will lead to increased student engagement and performance.
Combining STEM and physical education is an excellent method for getting students engaged across all areas of their education. This is especially effective at getting students excited and comfortable in subject areas they are not as familiar with, or historically skilled at. If a student has deemed themselves bad in STEM but great in athletics, they may be weary to engage in a science lesson. But, with the integration of STEM into physical education, the student can explore STEM concepts in a more comfortable environment, leading to success and increased confidence.
The combination also allows students to instinctively and naturally connect STEM concepts to real-world sports, fitness, and health scenarios. By connecting these concepts to everyday activities they see and do, students are more likely to understand and retain the information they are learning, leading to future success in courses, exams, and careers.
But, where do you start? How do you effectively incorporate STEM into your physical education curriculum at school or in a home school environment? Below are tips for how to successfully integrate these subjects with your students.
Adding wearable fitness technology into classroom lessons, such as heart rate monitors and pedometers allows students to collect real fitness data they can use throughout their STEM lessons. For example, students can use a heart rate monitor to track their heart rate throughout a handful of different physical activities. Then, they can use their data to graph how movement impacts their resting heart rate and recovery time.
Sports have a natural connection to physics, making these connections easy and natural. Through simple physical activity like running, jumping, and throwing, students can learn about key physics concepts – force, motion, and trajectory. An easy introduction to these concepts would be having students throw a ball to each other at different angles, noting how the angle of their throw impacts the total distance the ball travels.
Through sports, students can learn a lot about biomechanics and the impact of human movement in activities. To allow students to better understand these concepts, they can record themselves stretching, taking notice of which muscles and joints are being affected through the exercise.This simple activity will teach students about the science behind stretching, something that will positively impact them in the classroom and in their athletics.
Engineers play a major role in technological advancements in sports facilities and gear. By allowing students to act as engineers, designing their own field and sports apparel item, they will start to think critically about how small engineering decisions can greatly impact athlete performance. In STEM Basketball, students are tasked with designing a basketball shoe, a task that introduces students to the Engineering Design Process (EDP) using an approachable, real-world example.
Math can be found everywhere in our lives, something students often do not understand early in their education. Educators can easily integrate math into physical education by having students track data for something, such as shooting free throws, and calculating averages and percentages based on their and their classmates’ results.
There are many natural connections between STEM and someone’s personal health. By better understanding concepts like caloric intake versus burn, metabolism, and why the body needs water, students can make better choices for their body, leading to healthier lifestyles. These lessons can be easily implemented into physical education courses, and the benefits can span far beyond a students’ education.
Students love a healthy competition and an opportunity to go up against their peers. Through creating a STEM-PE challenge that combines sports and STEM, students can exercise their critical thinking and problem solving skills throughout the hands-on competition. An easy-to-implement example would be to task each student with creating the most effective method of moving a ball from one side of the gym to the other, without touching the ball. This will get students excited, engaged, and thinking innovatively.
When it comes to cross-curricular teaching methods, STEM and physical education are a natural and effective fit. Using the tips above, parents, educators, and school administrators can find ways to engage more students in classroom curricula in a way proven to improve student engagement and performance.
Even if it is starting with one or two of the tips above, growing into a fully integrated STEM-PE curriculum plan, there will be immediate student results that will prove the importance of leaning into these shared learning tactics.
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