FIAP Students Love to Be Active Too: Using Games as Motivation to Write Short Books

FIAP students are our special education students. They are integrated into regular classrooms when opportunity arises. I teach physical education to a junior and senior groups of kids. There are 14 kids in the two classes and some are in wheelchairs, some have limited mobility because of their disability and some are fairly mobile. This has been my first year working with these kids and I have learned a ton. I was hesitant about teaching this class and wondered what I would do with them. Actually, it hasn’t been hard. I have simply adapted what I do regularly to meet the needs of the students. I have placed a huge emphasis on movement challenges and on low organized simple games.

We used balloons earlier in the year to throw, catch, bat, bump, serve. This led to adapted games of volleyball. The students had great fun. I see the senior group of students for an extra fifteen minute class. For most of these fun fitness classes we have been using a DVD called “The Classroom Workout“. Recently I began to think about how these children might create books around fitness ideas.

As a review of the year, I asked my FIAP students to think about all the things we can do with a balloon. That was the beginning of our class book called “What Can You Do With a Balloon”. Again, the language experience approach to learning is the pedagogy behind this learning.

Check out our ebook “What Can You Do With a Balloon“. This is a simple book that the students created. Since some in the class are emerging readers, I thought their class book might motivate them to read. I used Iphoto to do this. Once the book was created I saved it as a PDF file and imported it to Imovie. Then I added music.