Ask most adults about PE in secondary school and they’ll usually have a story to tell. For some it’s the thrill of the competition or scoring the winning goal. For others, it’s standing in an oversized PE kit, hoping they wouldn’t be the last person picked!
As teachers, we have the opportunity to support young people’s health, wellbeing and confidence in PE lessons. We can also develop physical literacy, teamwork skills, confidence and build resilience, but most importantly, create positive memories that fuel future healthy habits.
In secondary PE lessons, you are often trying to balance curriculum demands, mixed ability groups and varying confidence levels. So, having the right resources to hand can really help to create inclusive lessons that encourage participation for all and help build students’ confidence and skills.
In this blog, we explore the importance of effective PE resources, practical teaching strategies, and engaging activities/approaches that can hopefully help support and inspire you as a secondary PE teacher.
The Importance of Effective PE Resources
We know the valuable role that having access to effective and inclusive PE resources can have in helping to plan inspiring lessons. Most PE teachers have experienced lessons where the plan looked great on paper, only for queues to form, equipment to disappear or students to lose interest while waiting their turn. Often, it’s the smallest changes that can make the biggest difference.
Having the right secondary school PE resources can overcome these issues. It can help with delivering engaging activities, supporting the curriculum requirements and creating an inclusive and positive learning environment.
Supporting Engagement and Curriculum Delivery
Maintaining students’ motivation can be difficult at times, particularly when they come with varying levels of confidence, ability and interest in physical activity. Every class is different. Some students are counting down the minutes until PE starts, while others are already worrying about what they will be asked to do. Planning the right activities helps every student find a way to experience success.
Consider choosing resources that support, scaffold and motivate. For example, you may want to develop skills such as throwing and catching. Think about different activities or ways to develop this skill with equipment. For example, target games could be introduced for additional motivation, various sized balls to cater for all abilities, or balls with bells to provide additional sensory input.
One of the biggest benefits of quality resources is their ability to encourage participation from less confident students. Visual demonstrations, skill progression cards, and differentiated activities allow students to develop skills at their own pace. This can reduce anxiety and increase confidence during practical lessons.
Creating varied and inclusive lessons can help with increasing participation while also building a love for a particular type of sport or activity that they may continue with throughout their life. Resources that offer multiple activity options, adaptations, and progression pathways all help to cater for different abilities while ensuring all students remain engaged. This keeps lessons feeling fresh, appealing, and hopefully helps students look forward to their PE sessions.
Effective and Interactive PE Teaching Strategies
Of course, resources are just one part of a lesson. When combined with a range of different teaching techniques and strategies, lessons become memorable and engaging for our young people.
Lessons that combine a mix of demonstration, repetition, feedback and active participation help learners to stay involved, engaged and understand what success looks like.
As we know, getting students involved and active through interactive teaching approaches, helps them to remain engaged while they learn and develop their practical skills and theoretical understanding. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Demonstrations
This continues to be one of the most effective approaches in PE lessons. Whether demonstrations are delivered by teachers, other students, or through videos and visual examples, these help students understand the movement patterns, techniques and what they are aiming for.
Student led warm-ups
These provide opportunities for leadership development while increasing students’ ownership of their learning. By allowing students to design and lead warm up activities, we also encourage responsibility, communication skills and creativity.
Peer coaching
Supporting students to observe, analyse and offer feedback to their peers can help to develop communication skills while reinforcing learning objectives.
Rotational skill stations
Students are given the opportunity to move between activities that target different skills, fitness components or tactical concepts. This keeps students active, reduces waiting time and allows different aspects of a skill to be practised in different ways.
Visual learning aids
Offering visual cues such as posters, diagrams, task prompts or progression cards support understanding and offers clear reference points throughout lessons. These can be particularly beneficial for children who need additional reinforcement and support through visual prompts.
Using Technology in PE
Technology can be a valuable tool in helping with the planning and delivery of engaging PE lessons. There are many different ways it can be used and many different pieces of software or platforms that can support.
Here are a few examples:
- Digital assessment tools enable teachers to track progress over time and be able to offer constructive and supportive feedback.
- Video analysis software allows students to review their performance, identify strengths (developing confidence) and recognise areas for improvement if necessary. If needed, they could closely analyse one part of a technique to support wider development.
- Fitness tracking technology, including heart rate monitors, activity trackers and fitness apps could be used to help learners understand exercise intensity, monitor their progress and develop awareness of the physiological aspects of exercise.
Building Real World Skills Through PE
We know that PE creates many opportunities to develop skills that go far beyond the classroom, sports hall or playing field.
Some of the biggest lessons learnt in PE have nothing to do with winning a game. They’re about encouraging teammates, persevering when something feels difficult and discovering strengths students didn’t realise they had.
By linking learning and activities to lifelong fitness habits, we can also help students understand the importance of regular physical activity and healthy lifestyles and how this can benefit energy, health and wellbeing.
Finally, there is the strong link and relationship between the mental health benefits of physical activity. PE resources that promote wellbeing, resilience, and stress management can all support students’ emotional development alongside their physical growth.
Engaging PE Activities and Learning Games
Learning through engaging, adaptable, fun activities and games can also really help increase enjoyment, motivation and participation within PE lessons.
Benefits of Game Based Learning
- Games – playing games provides a simple framework for learning new skills while maintaining high levels of engagement.
- Increased Motivation – students are often more willing to participate in skill development activities when they are presented within an enjoyable game format.
- Focus & Teamwork – students are encouraged to work together towards shared goals. This can help to develop communication skills while reinforcing technical and tactical concepts.
- Healthy Competition – competition can encourage effort and determination, when managed carefully. Consider different ways to celebrate success, winning and effort. Using challenges, point systems, personalised achievement targets, can all help to create excitement while promoting positivity towards participation. It is important to also recognise and celebrate effort and improvement, alongside achievement rather than purely focussing on performance outcomes.
- Skills Repetition – essential for improvement, but repetitive drills can become a bit tiring and students can lose interest. Games allow learners to practise skills over and over again without getting bored. They can revisit and use skills in different contexts and in various ways to really build confidence and support retention.
- Flexible and Adaptable – games can be adapted to suit different ability levels and scaffold learning so that all learners are able to participate. Modifying the rules, using adapted equipment, space or adjusting objectives all help to create inclusive experiences where every student can experience success.
Team and Classroom PE Activities
There are many different team and classroom PE activities that could be used. Here are just a few:
- Relay challenges are a simple way to develop speed, coordination and teamwork. They can also be easily adapted to focus on specific skills.
- Fitness circuits provide opportunities to target many different fitness components within a single lesson. Stations can be set up and adapted to accommodate different ability levels or curriculum objectives. You could also adapt and use circuits for learning theory alongside the lesson.
- Capture the flag style strategic activities combine physical activity with tactical thinking and teamwork. These games encourage communication, strategic planning and active participation.
- Small-sided games are particularly effective for developing technical and tactical understanding. By reducing the number of players on each team, students have more touches and increased opportunities to make decisions within their team.
- Quizzes, tactical board games and collaborative challenges can all be important in theory lessons and help students to engage with the knowledge needed in a different way.
PE Lesson Planning and Collaborative Learning
When lessons are planned and structured clearly, it ensures that students understand learning objectives, expectations and rules. Transitions are smoother and teachers have the time to focus on support and feedback.
Structuring Effective Practical PE Lessons
Many practical PE lessons typically follow a clear structure that supports progression.
This includes a:
- Warm up – with activities that prepare students for participation in the lesson. These would gradually increase heart rate while introducing movement patterns and skills.
- Skill Development – with a focus on teaching or refining specific skills or techniques.
- Game Application – to allow students to apply newly learned skills within different contexts and games.
- Cool down – to support recovery while providing opportunities for reflection, evaluation, and discussion to reinforce key learning objectives.
Maintaining the pace is essential for engagement, and effective resources can support this to help minimise downtime. Efficient equipment management is also important as it can help streamline the setup and pack away of resources, so children are active and learning for as much time as possible.
Inclusive and Differentiated Teaching
There are of course many different inclusive and differentiated strategies that can be adapted and personalised for individuals. Within PE, our aim is that every student is supported to participate meaningfully and to achieve. This can be through specific targeted support or challenge opportunities. This will require thoughtful planning and consideration around adaptations, inclusive equipment, alternative activities and personalising objectives and outcomes.
There really is no such thing as a ‘typical’ PE class. Every group brings different experiences, interests and confidence levels, which is why flexibility is such an important part of effective teaching.
There are of course many personalised strategies which learners may need to ensure they are ready and able to learn. Here, we consider a few examples of more PE specific inclusive strategies:
- Adapting equipment and rules creates learning experiences that support a diverse range of needs. This could be larger balls, modified playing areas, adjusted scoring systems, adaptable equipment or playing an inclusive sport.
- Mixed ability strategies encourage collaboration and peer support. These can help to create positive learning environments where every student feels valued.
- Differentiation through skill-based outcomes, fitness goals, and teamwork targets provide multiple pathways to success. This recognises achievement in many different forms.
- Visual prompts and cues can support those learners who need more.
- Repetition is often important as it allows us to keep revisiting and practising the fundamental movement skills.
- Independent and group learning can be tailored based on individuals or the cohorts learning preferences. Some things may lend themselves to working in pairs, individually or in a team.
Collaborative Learning Strategies
Collaborative learning tasks help to build communication and leadership skills. Leadership opportunities, team strategy discussions and peer feedback activities all encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and to think deeply about their performance. They build confidence and help create memorable learning experiences.
It’s often surprising who steps into a leadership role during PE. Students who are quieter in the classroom or less visible in more academic subjects can sometimes flourish when they’re given the responsibility, encouragement and the chance to support others in a space where they can shine.
Together, young people could plan tournaments, design fitness programmes, create team strategy presentations, analyse videos and write reflection journals. All of these activities would support both practical and theoretical learning while allowing students to learn from and alongside each other.
Get Ready to Support PE Today
We want to inspire a generation of young people who enjoy being active, and PE has an important role to play in making that happen.
Every positive experience in a PE lesson can help build confidence, spark motivation and encourage students to find a type of physical activity that they can enjoy now and in the future.
Years from now, most students won’t remember every warm-up or game played, but they’ll remember how PE made them feel. Not just warm and sweaty but the other things such as being confident to join in, proud when they mastered a new skill or included as part of a team. With thoughtful teaching and the right resources, we can help create those moments and inspire a lifelong enjoyment of being active.
If you are looking for secondary school PE resources that inspire participation, build confidence and make physical education engaging and accessible for all, TTS offers a wide range of resources designed to support every learner on their journey.
