Starting off the year on the right foot is essential. Here are my 5 top tips:

Tip #1 – Connect
Establish a connection with students and peer to peer relationships through initiative games, interactive classroom activities, collaborative tasks.

Tip #2 – Class profiles
Collate a class profile on students including:

• students learning plans
• wellbeing needs
• medical information
• data from previous year, pretesting (summative or formative)
• NAPLAN results may also be helpful to gauge students’ strengths and areas to improve this year.

Tip #3 – Aim high
Provide high expectations. Students need to be challenged and their full potential and engaged to set themselves up for success. Provide clear learning intentions, differentiated activities that challenge all learners and ask students to reflect on their growth and learning.

Tip #4 – Student choice
Provide student choice – begin the year with students having the opportunity to take ownership of their learning. This could be in individual or group activities or and in assessment for, as, of learning.

Tip #5 – Create the link
Embed the relevance and why this learning matters. This is most important in providing a hidden message behind WHY PDHPE is the most important subject. Students buy into the learning from a teacher who creates real world learning links.