This column describes the game of Royal Pickles -- a "King of the Court'' variation of pickleball that removes the bored spectator element from the class and creates a solution for the challenge of having too many students and not enough court space.

Sports are a central part of Grades 3-12 curricular content in school physical education. Guided by the theory of situated learning, a new curricular model called Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays (SGTSP) has been proposed to systematically teach sports to 3rd-12th graders and college students using situated set plays from a situational and…

Purpose: Little is known about how teachers acquire specialized content knowledge (SCK). We examine the hypothesis that SCK is not acquired from K-12 physical education and from extracurricular activities characterized by playing; instead, SCK must be explicitly taught to teachers. Method: Students were enrolled in either basic physical activity…

Table top tennis is a game that can be played in the classroom or lunchroom when the gymnasium is unavailable. It is a good activity for developing sportspersonship and responsibility in students in grades four and up. This article provides a description of table top tennis, including basic rules and strategies; an explanation of how it can…

One of the central functions of teaching is formal assessment. However, formal assessment in school physical education often consists of attributing final grades to students at the conclusion of a unit (i.e., summative assessment). Moreover, grades have often been based on effort, attendance, and dress. Practical and authentic assessment…

Four-week summer academy programs served homeless children and adults in two contiguous innovative learning programs. The programs may be the first of their kind in the homeless literature in which both adults and children were exposed to career, academic, and leadership opportunities in the supportive learning environment of a university campus,…

This study examines the recollections of the Sport Education experiences of a cohort of students (15 boys and 19 girls) who had participated in seasons of basketball, soccer and badminton across grades six through eight (average age at data collection = 15.6 years). Using autobiographic memory theory techniques, the students completed surveys and…

Designing and implementing assessment instruments are ongoing challenges for physical educators. The initial design phase includes asking the question, "What do I want the students to know and/or be able to do?" Seemingly, the question is direct and should lead to a concrete answer. In addition to designing assessment instruments, one of the most…

Based on Competence Motivation Theory (CMT), a Moodle course for schoolchildren's table tennis learning was developed (The URL is http://www.bssepp.com, and this course allows guest access). The effects of the course on students' knowledge, perceived competence and interest were evaluated through quantitative methods. The sample of the study…

The physical education field abounds with theoretically sound curricular approaches such as fitness education, skill theme approach, tactical approach, and sport education. In an era that emphasizes authentic sport experiences, the Sport Education Model includes unique features that sets it apart from other curricular models and can be a valuable…

The United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) has developed a universal language for tennis instruction entitled System 5: The Five Keys to Tennis, which is extremely easy to teach and learn and covers court positioning, strategy, and stroke selection. Many professional tennis instructors have used System 5 since its inception but…

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of action research as a framework to investigate cooperative learning and tactical games as instructional models in physical education (PE). The teacher/researcher taught a tennis unit using a combination of Cooperative Learning and Teaching Games for Understanding to three classes of boys aged…