To start off, our groups inquiry question was “what is a tool that we can use to encourage physical activity in any classroom?”. The majority of my group was PHE teachers and so we were trying to find ways to get students active because of the benefits it can have in learning. Students who have increased physical activity in their lives tend to have an overall better well being and they tend to be better learners. This is the reason why we thought it was important to find a resource that can help incorporate physical activity into any classroom.

We ended up finding a website called Goosechase which is an interactive online scavenger hunt game. It is a fun resource that can be effective for a collaborative activity that encourages students to participate. In a French classroom, I think that it would be awesome to use as a warm up activity or a game at the end of class. I am thinking that it could be useful as a review game, as a vocabulary scavenger hunt or as an icebreaker activity at the beginning of the school year. One of my favourite parts of this app is that you are able to see the answers and photos that kids are posting. It was awesome when we did it in class, seeing everyone’s selfies with Guillaume or their pyramids! I think the students will also find this fun to see their own silly pictures and everyone else’s!

Some of the pros to this website is that it is easy to use and students don’t need to make an account in order to use it. It also encourages collaboration and communication skills. You also only need one device per group which is helpful for students who don’t have a phone. Some cons to this website is that you can only have three teams, which might make it difficult if you have a larger class. It also costs 400$ to upgrade which is a little insane. You also need wifi in order for this game to work, so if you wanted to use it on a class field trip, you would have to make sure that there is wifi ahead of time.

Overall, I think that I have a better understanding of how to incorporate physical activity into a classroom and why it is important. For example, if you are able to model a good balance of work time to physical activity time as a teacher I think that this encourages students to understand why physical activity is important and hopefully encourages them to think about it in their own lives. I also remember in high school when it was obligatory to take a PE class and all of the activities that we did seemed to be related to team sports. I think if you incorporate different types of physical activity in your classroom such as going for walks, planning fun field trips or using resources such as Goosechase, students will realize that physical activity does not mean just team sports. Another thing that I thought was interesting was all of the core competencies that can be touched on with physical activities. Skills such as creativity, problem-solving, communication and collaboration are all important for students to develop. When you plan activities that involve being physically active they tend to incorporate group work, or going outside which is a very easy way for students to feel like they are an active part of their learning and these core competency skills can become more developed.

I thought that our group worked well together and the work was shared fairly equally. We all collaborated together and split the tasks up between everyone. I helped create the powerpoint, we all helped make the questions and we all took a part in presenting together. Rachelle and I took on the task of running the game for everyone!