Wii and PE?

Can the Wii be used in a whole class to do PE?



I was really pleased to see this week that some of my ICT Innovators grab hold of the school Wii to try it in class. On our development day we looked at ways that the Wii could be use for exercise and PE, we had ideas, but we weren’t 100% sure about it in a whole class environment.

The PE Coordinator at my school, was interested and said he’d give PE and the Wii a go. So since it was Do Something Different Day, in aid of Children in Need and the weather had rained off outside PE, he had a go.

I helped him set it up in his room and suggested that he use Mario and Sonic at the Olympics since is had a lot of active sporting activities, and to lay them you have to get a lot more active.

The children got changed for PE and then where split into four teams. So very similar when you do team activates where one person does the run and then they tag the next person to go. (Does that have a better name?)

They started with the 100m sprint. So the first child did their race, then the children did a quick swap and the race was repeated and the next person in the team, had a go. This continued till each team member attempted the event and then the event changed. This continued through 2/3 events.

The children had a great time and the teacher said it was a good experience. He was impressed because everyone in the class was able to take part in this, regardless of ability since the controls where easy. Both he and I has a few concerns starting out, we where worried about the down time for others in the group, but in most cases this was very short since the swap was quick and the length of a race is about 30 seconds. The more you do it the quicker that the children would get. Space is an issue and you do need to clear an area to do this best in a classroom.

He was quick to point out that it does not replace a normal PE lesson, which I totally agree with, but it did get the children active in the classroom. The pros far outweighed the cons. I’m eager now to try this with my class the next time, my outside PE lesson gets rained off.