Math, Reading, and Physical Education?

In lab on April 9th we were in the Exergame room. This was a whole new world introduced to me. I am extremely impressed with the amount of activities there were and how much you could do with them. Each game gives you multiple options to keep the entire room moving rather than 4 or 5 students. Technology never seizes to amaze me in physical education. There are activities for students of all ages that will hold their interest for an entire physical education class. The dance game was one of these games that could keep students moving for hours on end. I really liked how it let everyone pick their own level of difficulty rather than a general level for everyone. This lets students challenge themselves as they want rather than forcing them to either play a less or more advanced version of the game for their personal ability. Each person can set the level based on their ability without affecting anyone else's game. 


The Exergame Lab is filled with a bunch of fun games for students of all ages and abilities. The kick boxing game being one of the best! I would use this game in middle schools and high schools especially with all students of all abilities. This game gives students no excuses at all to not be participating in any way that they want. For example, if a student has a broken leg, give them a padded pole to hit the targets on the punching bag. Students who are not up to the punching bag can use the dance mats in the background or even punch anad kick as if they had a bag in front of them. There are many ways of using the different games in the Exergame lab. Meeting the CEO of Exergaming was really nice too because he could answer any questions that we had! I like that we can use our own music for the games because everyone exercises to different music. In a class you can have each student pick on song and make a play list to go through in each class. Also, it gives you a bigger variety of songs to use rather than the slim selection Dance Dance Revolution gives us. 

The biking game is interesting as well. There are two different versions aimed for students of different ages. I played the one aimed towards elementary students, and still had a great time! We played it where one person was using their arms to spin the peddles of the bike while the other person was steering. Again this brought education into the classroom because instead of just riding a bike around a track, there were different problems, letters, or numbers that we had to collect. The level we played was aimed more for kindergarten and younger. We did letter and number identification. This game again gets students to work on other subjects while being physically active. It can work the same way as the dance or kick boxing games do where you can set up other bikes in the background and have students biking as well. If there are not enough bikes for every student to have their own, then pair them up and have one peddle and one steer!


There are other great games that would perfect for elementary aged students. One in particular is hyper dash. Pre-schoolers can use this game to practice their colors and numbers. First and second graders can use it to practice their adding and subtracting. Third grade through fifth grade can use this game to practice multiplication and division. This game is great because it can incorporate physical education with other classes. Students will be more willing to learn if they are not just sitting there being told to do 5 math problems on their paper. This game allows of students to do some critical thinking while moving around. Some ways of using this game could be to set the answer "plates" around the room and students listen for the question and then run, gallop, skip, lead, etc. to the answer around the room. Using hyper dash is a great way to incorporate other subjects into physical education.