Hone your students’ hand-eye coordination, teamwork and resilience with this fun, fast-moving sequence of activities…
As a PE teacher and coach, I’m always looking for new activities that are challenging and which students will genuinely enjoy.
It’s so satisfying to see students finish a class exhausted and rosy-cheeked, with beaming grins on their faces. This is especially the case when I know they’ve developed their hand-eye coordination skills and confidence.
In this lesson plan the speed square activity has been applied to football. You can adapt it to any game that involves travelling, sending and receiving.
Why teach this?
The Speed Square is a fun and challenging activity that’s fast, competitive and easily adaptable for various sports, ages and abilities.
Key curriculum links
- Develop a range of fitness and skill components for KS3/4
- Link to GCSE and A Level practical performance descriptors for games activities
- Develop teamwork and resilience
- Promote physical, social and mental health and wellbeing
Starter activity
Who doesn’t love a good warm up? Start students off jogging in a square. Call out dynamic stretches, such as high knees, heel flicks, touching the ground, 360 spins, headers and side steps.
Have the students freeze on your whistle. The last one to do so complete a fun forfeit, such as five star jumps or press ups.
Now call out a number and ask students to get into groups of that number. The last group to do so does a fun forfeit.
Get the students to line up across the middle of the square, and call out ‘left!’ or ‘right!’ – they have to run to the correct edge of the square and back to the middle line.
The last one back does a fun forfeit. Then make them run in the opposite directions to those you call out, or try adding some maths – e.g. ‘odd = left’ and ‘even = right’.
Give out forfeits if you successfully trick them, or have the first person back give out a forfeit on your behalf. Don’t be scared to take a forfeit yourself if the whole class follow your directions correctly!
Jack Costello is assistant principal and DSL at Richmond Park Academy in southwest London, having originally joined in 2002 as a short-term supply teacher after relocating to the UK from Sydney.
