Inclusive Design Class Transcript

Kelly Bonner: Today we here at NCHPAD are opening up our playbook to share some winning strategies with you. As promoters of health and physical activity we are all on the same team and working towards the same goals. Helping everyone be physically active. Which, if you ask me, is a huge victory for every student in physical education.

Today we are going to take 3 winning plays, or strategies if you will, out of our playbook and pass them on to you. Our hope is that these 3 will be 3 inclusive class designs that you can implement into your classes.

The first class design that we are going to talk about is zone games. Zone games can be used with any game that uses a court or field to play on. Games like basketball, soccer and hockey are all great examples. Today we are going to use the example of basketball. There are a number of ways you can use zone games to benefit your class and make it more inclusive. First, when playing zone basketball the goal is to divide your playing area into as many zones as necessary. For example, if you have a couple of wheelchair users in your class, you wanna divide your court up into at least 2 zones. One zone for ambulators and one zone for chair users. But if you only have one chair user in your class, you might wanna think about other ways you can add more people into that zone equally. For example, maybe you wanna put a group on scooter boards. Or maybe you have some extra rolling office chairs lying around that a couple of students could play on. Zone games can also be used for different speeds of ambulation. You can cut the court in half. So, you have a zone 1 and a zone 2 so they don't have to move around as much. Or you can make a center lane so that the student still don't have as far to travel. You can have the outside zone and the inside zone. You could also use zones to help teach a certain skill and be inclusive at the same time. For example, say you have a student that can only use one hand. You can make that zone be the left-handed zone. And every student in that zone has to shoot or dribble with their left hand. Be sure to switch the zones around regularly so that they all end up working in that zone. When you’re using a basketball court, another benefit to zone games can be implementing multiple goals to shoot at. You can offer the standard 8 or 10 foot basketball goals. But then you can also add in a lower goal, possibly a laundry basket simply placed on top of a folding chair. Be sure to allow all student to choose which goal they want to shoot at and not just the student with the disability. You will probably find that lots of students will benefit from this multi-goal design. There a lots of ways you can make zone games work for you. Maybe you need to implement a rule that the ball has to pass through every zone before you shoot. Maybe you need to limit the time spent in each zone. Whatever it is, be creative on how you can make your class design the most accessible for all of your students. Whenever you can get all kids with a range of abilities playing successfully on one court then that’s a winning play, if you ask me.

The second winning class design in our playbook is stations. Stations provide a great opportunity to make your class as inclusive as possible and can prevent that unfortunate scenario where the student with the disability is off to the side playing by himself or with his para educator. Here are some of the benefits of using stations. Number 1: Stations help to break down a skill so that every student has a chance to learn it. We all know that not all students are created equal when it comes to athleticism and coordination, so this doesn't just help the student with the disability in your class, it can help every student. Number 2: Stations help keep the class aerobic. When students are learning a new skill it's hard to find ways to keep their heart rates up. Breaking the stations up into skill development and physical fitness can help you do both. Number 3: No down time. Keeping the transitions between stations as quick as possible means that there isn't a lot of down time for your kids to be standing around. To keep these transitions quick you might need to look at some alternate forms of transportation from station to station. For some of your kids, scooter boards might be a great option. You also wanna be sure to pair certain stations together. For instance, if one station requires a student get out of their wheelchair and onto the floor, it might be a great idea to have them take a scooter board to the next station that also has them out of their chair and on the floor. That way you don't have to stop the class to give your student time to transition back in and out of their chair. Number 4: Color coding. Trust me on this one and you can thank me later. Color coding can add a whole other layer of inclusiveness and help your class run even smoother. You can color code by difficulty level. For example, the red stations may always be the easier option. Or the non-ambulatory option. Or the students can challenge themselves with the blue station. You can also allow all students to choose if they want to be red or blue. But the student who is not ambulatory should be able to use the process of elimination to realize that they can do the red station instead of coming to ask you every time how they can do it. Color coding is also great for students with intellectual disabilities. For instance, maybe the student with an intellectual disability is always the green station. Then you will always know where she should go to next or you can use it for implementation selection too. For example, she can use the green ball or the green bat, you can also place green arrows on the floor to the next green station. Hopefully this will eliminate lots of questions from those same students. Today we are gonna use cross fit like stations that you can use with your entire class. When designing strength training stations there are a couple things you want to remember. One, always separate muscle groups. You don't want the student working the same muscle groups two stations in a row. For example, you can split the exercise up with upper body and lower body, but this gets a little more challenging when you're working with students who can't use the lower half of their body, like a student with spina bifida. To get around working the same muscle groups in a row, try to dividing the exercises up between pushes and pulls. You can also make cross fit style stations really fun. There’s no need to use the same old boring numbers like 3 sets of 10. Try to make the stations work for the class period. Maybe use the date or the score from last week’s football game, or maybe you'd like to do Friday’s filthy fifty. Have fun with it. You can also have fun with the moves. Again, no need to stick to the standard moves like bicep curls. Try to think of some fun moves for your kids. Maybe you can make a move named after your team's mascot.

The third winning class design in our playbook is relays. Now you may be implementing relays all the time, but did you know they are a great way to implement disability sports? They can be used as an inclusion activity or just educational as students learn the different ways people can be active. The benefits of relays are numerous. It can help students stay on task by creating small teams. It can be designed to be as active or inactive as you need it to be. And relays can also allow students to choose a task that’s a strength for them, when otherwise that area of expertise may never be highlighted. Today we are going to go over my favorite relay called the 4 P's. The 4 P's relay stands for people, which is students on the team. Place: what area of the gym or field you're at. Prop: what item they have to use. And Position: which stands for what mode of locomotion they're gonna use to get there. Here's how it works. Divide your class up into teams. Tell your students that they must work together as a team to complete the relay. Each team member must use a different "P" from each of the four categories. Give the students time to strategize who would be the best person for each "P". It will probably be helpful to hand each team their list of P's so that they can check them off. Give them a countdown to start and then time them to see which teams can finish first. Here's my list of P's to give you some examples. P: People, all of the students on their team. We have Katie, John, Suzie and Jake. You can either allow them repeats or no repeats Place. Area of the gym or field that you're using: basket 1, corner 3, or the storage closet. Props are any item that you want them to use: basketball, soccer ball, exercise band. And finally, Position. Any way that you want them to get there: scooter board, dribbling, chest pass, whatever you feel fits best for your class. Your student who uses a wheelchair and one of their ambulatory friends may choose to use the basketball with a chest pass at the first basket. That marks off two of the students. Two of your soccer players may choose to dribble the ball all the way down to corner 3. Then you may have a student that has a hard time ambulating, they may choose to use the scooter board, and then when they get to the storage closet they're gonna use the exercise band. And that’s just one example of how you can use the 4 P's.

Thanks for watching. If you have any questions you can comment below or contact us at NCHPAD.org.