September PE Plan: The 6 Skills That Set the Tone for Your Entire School Year!

Wondering what to teach during the first month of elementary PE? In this episode of CRAZY FUN PE with Mrs. T., elementary PE teacher Jen Tiemann shares the 6 essential PE skills she teaches every September to build a fun, safe, and successful school year.

You'll discover practical ideas for teaching gym rules and routines, personal space, locomotor skills, balance, teamwork, respect, and sportsmanship, plus favorite PE games, read-aloud books, and classroom management tips that help students build confidence from day one.

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Welcome to Crazy Fun PE with Mrs. T. The podcast that's on a

mission to make school fun again.

Every Monday morning, I'll wake you up with unique PE games, creative

teaching ideas, and simple management tips that get kids moving, laughing,

and having a total blast, sometimes with a squeaky rubber chicken or two.

I'm your host, Mrs. T. Now let's get moving.

Hey there, PE friends.

Welcome back to another episode of Crazy Fun PE with Mrs. T. Can you believe we

are already talking about September?

If you're anything like me, your gym's gonna be filled with excited

students and brand-new kindergartners, returning fifth graders, lots of energy,

and quite possibly a bit of chaos.

Uh, it's back to school season.

Yay.

All right.

So today I wanna help make your September PE planning simple, because there's

something I believe pretty strongly about, uh, in PE, and that is that

September isn't about teaching sports.

It's way more about teaching the other skills that make

every other month successful.

And if you can get September right, October through May

becomes so much easier.

So today I am sharing the six essential skills that I focus

on in PE every September.

So let's jump in.

First up, skill number one: rules, routines, and safety.

Again, I don't think the most important thing you teach in September is

throwing or catching or dribbling or basketball or soccer or volleyball.

I think it's routines.

September is about building the foundation that will make the rest of your school

year fun, organized, and successful.

Before we ever worry about throwing and kicking and dribbling and all

that stuff, I want my students to know exactly how we do things in our gym.

How do we enter the gym?

What does it mean when I blow my whistle three times?

Where do we line up?

How do we clean up equipment?

Those routines may not seem exciting on day one, but trust me, they will save you

hours of instructional time and classroom management headaches throughout the year.

I also like to keep my expectations really simple.

So instead of giving students a list of 15 rules that they're gonna forget

by the time they get back to their regular classroom, I just teach one

rule that I call respect four: respect yourself, respect the teacher, respect

others, and respect the equipment.

Those four simple expectations cover just about every situation

that comes up in the gym.

And if you are looking for a great way to introduce safety to your

younger students, one of my all-time favorite read-alouds is Officer

Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann.

It's funny, engaging.

It opens the door to some awesome conversations about why

listening, following directions, and making safe choices It helps

everyone, uh, have more fun.

Remember, every extra minute that you invest in teaching routines, safety,

and respect during September will pay you back for the next eight or nine

months, which is pretty darn awesome.

Next up is skill number two, personal space and pathways.

So after teaching rules, routines, and safety, I move into personal

space and pathways, and here is why.

If your students can't move safely in general space without bumping

into each other, everything else becomes a lot harder.

Before basketballs or jump ropes or pool noodles, I want my students to learn

how to travel safely through the gym, change directions, freeze on command,

and be aware of the people around them.

We talk about, um, and we practice personal space, general space,

straight pathways, curved pathways, changing directions, stopping,

freezing, all of that stuff.

Those simple movement skills become the foundation for every game, activity, and

sport that we'll play throughout the year.

So taking a little extra time to teach spatial awareness in September makes

classroom management so much easier for the rest of the school year.

One of my favorite ways to introduce this concept is with a fun read-aloud

called Personal Space Camp, um, and that is written by Julia Cook.

It just does a really good job of helping kids understand the idea of

having their own personal space bubble, and then we get up and put those ideas

into action with simple activities using poly spots and kind of activities where

every student has their own safe home base or their magic bubble in the gym.

And of course, you all know by now that I am about finding unique ways to make

every topic, no matter what it is, fun.

So with that, one of my all-time favorite games that reinforces personal

space and pathways is Bubble Cars.

It's a crazy fun whole-class game where students use hula hoops as cars.

They also get to pretend to be police officers and hand out traffic

tickets and send their classmates to driving school to get more practice.

It's silly, active with some dramatic play thrown in there.

It's a blast.

I will leave the link to how to play that awesome game in the show notes for you.

Students absolutely love it, and they don't even realize how much they're

learning about spatial awareness.

Okay, then we move to number three, locomotor skills, which honestly you

don't just teach this and move on.

I feel like we are pretty much teaching locomotor skills all

year long and in every grade.

But I put most of my teaching focus on eight key locomotor skills, including

walking, running, skipping, galloping, sliding, hopping, leaping, and jumping.

These really are the building blocks of almost everything

that we do in elementary PE.

Don't rush through them.

Make them fun.

Play games like Simon Says, Follow the Leader, and locomotor skills charades.

Use music.

Have them pretend to be animals, uh, with games like, um Red light,

green light, or the game I play with animals is zoo stop go.

So the stronger these movement patterns become, you guessed it, the more

successful students will be all year long.

I have a ton, a ton, a ton, of awesome locomotor skill practice games in my

book, 59 Crazy Fun PE, PE Games That Rock.

You can also find all of the rules, equipment, and how to play details in

my blog post on my website for free.

So whenever I'm talking about a game on here, you can go right to my website,

search it up, and, um, just read the blog post with all of the game how to

play information on there for free.

So it's hard to narrow it down, but, uh, out of all the games, but

I would say Candyland Trail and Hot Lava River Run are incredible, um,

locomotor skill practice games for K2, and then Float Your Boat is amazing

for practicing locomotor skills with, uh, your third through fifth graders.

I even play that one with sixth, seventh, and eighth.

They just really, really like it.

They're all in my book, but again, I will leave the blog post links for those

games in the show notes for you so that you can click to them very quickly.

Okay, the fourth skill I really focus on during September

is balance and body control.

Uh, you know, it's funny, when most people think about PE, they think

about running fast or throwing a ball, but before students can do any

of those things well, they need to learn how to control their own bodies.

I always tell my students, "You have to learn how to control your

body before you can control a ball."

One thing that's really important is to demonstrate the skill first.

Model what good balance looks like, and then give your students

plenty of time to practice.

I like to start with static balance or simply keeping your

body still without falling over.

We'll do fun challenges like the flamingo stand, tree pose, airplane

pose, or Even balancing like a beanbag on different body parts.

Um, the kids think they're just playing, but they're actually building some

really important movement skills.

Once they're feeling confident standing still, then I move to

dynamic balance exercises, which is balancing while your body is moving.

So activities like walking on floor lines, heel to toe walking, stepping over cones,

or like following simple balance pathways.

Those are all really great ways to help students improve their

coordination and body control.

The key is to keep it short, fun, and consistent.

Just a few minutes of balance practice each class in September can really

make a huge difference in your students' confidence and movement

skills for the rest of the school year.

Then we take those skills and practice them with super fun movement games like

Strike a Pose and re- uh, Reverse Pac-Man Tag, where balance and body control and

quick reactions all kind of come together.

And every once in a while, um, I'll even mix things up

and do some Cosmic Kids yoga.

Love that.

The kids love it too.

And you can get all those videos for free on YouTube.

They have all different adventure themes like Pokemon and all sorts of fun stuff.

All right, we are up to skill number five, important stuff

here, cooperation and teamwork.

And again, honestly, this might be the most important skill I teach

all- Of September, and then you keep teaching it and teaching it.

But one of my favorite things about PE is that we get to teach life skills.

Winning is fun, for sure, but learning how to encourage teammates, communicate,

share, solve problems, those are skills that students will use forever.

If you've listened to episode number one of this podcast, you know that one of my

biggest goals is to make school fun again.

And I truly believe that happens when kids learn to encourage each other,

include everyone, celebrate each other's successes, and realize they're

stronger together than they are alone.

That's why every year, I read my all-time favorite teamwork book, Swimmy, by Leo

Lionni, Lionni, I don't really know.

But it's such a powerful reminder that every child has unique strengths,

and when we work together, we can accomplish incredible things.

So throughout September, we don't just talk about teamwork,

we practice it every single day.

Learn what words like cooperation and communication and trust and

responsibility and encouragement actually look and sound like in the gym.

Um, we'll even act out good teamwork behaviors through little skits, practice

problem-solving things together, uh, problem-solving problems, whatever.

And play cooperative games like chain tag and turtle tag and catch and stack.

And oh, I've almost forgot, my outrageously fun twenty minute

to win it team challenges.

I love cooperative teamwork games because they remind students, sometimes

the goal isn't beating somebody else.

Sometimes the goal is simply helping everyone succeed.

And here's one little tip that's made a huge difference in my gym.

I always start with, uh, simple partner activities before moving to larger teams.

So as students build trust and confidence with one partner,

they're much more successful working together in groups later on.

Uh, because at the end of the day, I'm not just trying to teach kids, again,

how to throw a ball or play a game.

I'm trying to help them become kind teammates, encouraging classmates,

and just really good people.

And if we can do that, then we have accomplished something way

bigger than just teaching PE.

All right, we have made it.

Finally, number six is respect, manners, and sportsmanship.

All right, let's talk about respect.

If you've listened to previous episodes, you already know I have one rule.

I call it respect four: respect yourself, respect the teacher,

respect others, respect the equipment.

That's it.

Simple, easy to remember, and honestly, it covers almost everything.

But I also want my students to understand what respect actually looks like.

It's listening when someone else is speaking.

It's using kind words, waiting your turn, accepting mistakes with a

positive attitude, respecting different ability levels, and remembering

that every single person in our gym deserves to feel valued and included.

One thing I insist on in my class is good manners.

Please and thank you aren't optional.

They're part of who we are as a PE family.

We play a super fun game called Shop Till You Drop that reinforces good manners.

The kids love it, and so do I. I made it up a bunch of years ago,

um, and it w- it has just evolved into one of our absolute favorites.

I will leave the link to that game for you in the show notes, and if you

already have my PE games book, it is game number 32 in my book I also spend

time teaching what it means to be a good sport, because sportsmanship is about

so much more than winning and losing.

It's playing by the rules, being honest, encouraging your teammates,

congratulating others, trying your best, and showing self-control

even when things don't go your way.

One of my favorite books to spark those conversations is The Recess Queen,

because it naturally leads into talking about kindness, inclusion, leadership,

and treating others with respect.

And here's one final tip that has made a huge difference for me over the years.

I try to catch students doing something right just as often, if not more often,

than I catch them doing something wrong.

When we intentionally praise kindness, good manners, good behavior,

and great sportsmanship, these positive behaviors begin to spread.

And before long, you've created a gym where students aren't just learning PE

skills, they're learning how to become respectful teammates, encouraging

classmates, and caring human beings.

And to me, that's a pretty awesome thing.

So I have these little sports jokes stationary cards that I

make it a point to give one out to a student every single class.

Just a quick, "Hey, thanks for trying your best during our basketball

game today," or, "I appreciate how you showed compassion for your

classmate when you saw that they were sad or got hurt." Whatever it is.

But that little note or praise means so much to your students.

The way we treat each other in September definitely determines the kind of

culture that we will have in May Well, my friend, I know that was a lot of

information packed into one episode.

But remember, you do not have to implement everything at once.

You can pick one thing that kind of resonated with you and go with

it, and leave the rest behind.

My hope is that you walked away with one or two ideas that you can start

using in your gym this September to help build a fun, safe, and very

successful school year for your students.

And if you are thinking, "Mrs. T, I need to go back and see all those

books and games and vocabulary words and lesson ideas and everything that

you talked about," do not worry.

I've got you covered.

This i- has been put together into a very detailed blog post that literally

includes everything we talked about today, plus all of the direct links to

all the read-aloud books, the PE games, the free downloads that are included,

the lesson ideas, all of that stuff.

I will also… So I'm gonna leave that direct link to that blog post

for you so you can just go right there and soak everything in.

Um, soak everything up.

Whatever you're supposed to say.

Okay.

I'll also include a link to my complete September PE lesson plan

bundle in today's show notes if you'd like to save yourself a whole bunch

of planning time this school year.

Remember, September isn't about teaching every sport under the sun.

It's about building the foundation for an incredible year.

Invest a little extra time teaching routines, movement skills, teamwork, and

respect now, and your students and your future self will thank you all year long.

All right.

Guess what time it is?

Yep, corny sports joke time.

So here it goes.

What do you get when you bowl when eating fruit?

A banana split.

Yep.

I hope you're laughing at that one.

If today's episode gave you one idea you can use in your gym tomorrow, I would

love it if you'd follow this new podcast, leave a quick five-star review, and share

it with a PE bestie or two of yours.

But until next time, remember, if you had fun, you totally won.

Now, get out there and let's make school fun again together.