Ball!

Really good starter, gets students attentive to instruction, and creates great focus in the class. Good way of linking languages into PE

Preparation
1 Ball between pairs

Activity
1. Students stand in pairs with a ball fairly placed in between them (1 step away).
2. Students listen to teacher instruction, if the teacher shouts a body part, pupil must touch e.g. Head (student touch head)
3. Game continues until the teacher shouts "Ball", the first student to grab the ball is the winner

Language Link
Change the language your are speaking in, a good way of teaching body parts in different languages

Adaptations
Can be used in a classroom environment touching cue cards placed on a table between pairs sitting down

Progressions
Make the ball smaller (harder) or bigger (easier)

World Cup Rock-Paper-Scissors

This is a good ice breaker, and gets even better the bigger the class

Set Up
No equipment is required! You just need to make sure that all students are familiar with the rules of rock paper scissors. Rules are explained in link below...

Activity
1. Students find a partner to face in the first round of the rock paper scissors world cup
2. The winner of the game goes through to the next round, and finds another player to face against
3. The loser becomes a supporter/ fan of their victor, and follows them around supporting/ cheering for them.
4. Game continues until their are only two active players left (Finalists) and all their supporting crowd with them.
5. They face off to see who is the World Champion of RPS

Jet-Set-Go!

This game is a really fun starter that gets children engaged and active straight away. Once you have set up the cards it takes little time to organise, and also has cross-curricular benefits such as Geography/ OAA/ Literacy.

Set Up
1. Create Laminate Cards with 2 flags of countries playing in the world cup e.g. England and Italy. One flag will be identified as the country the student is currently at, the other will be the country the child will need to move to next. (See below)

2.  Create a checklist so that students can write the order of nations they have encountered, this will show you that they have not missed out any countries. You dont have to be fancy though, a piece of paper an pen will be fine!

3. Place/ Stick/ Tie/ Attach the laminate sheets around the space you are using.

Activity
1. Students can work on their own or in groups for this task
2. The aim of the game is start at one country and then move around the space to find the country/ flag that is identified as next in order. The first team that goes around all the flags so that they have returned back to their first country is the winner. They must write down the order of the countries to show they have completed it correctly

Simplifications
1.One member of the team goes every time, reducing the amount the child is running because you are switching around every time

Progressions
1. Do not provide the students with the names of the countries, instead they must remember by the flag
2. Spread the sheets out so that they have further to run

Example sheet


You are currently in England ----------------------------------> Next stop is Italy


Equipment Required
Pens/ Paper/ Laminated country cards/ checklist