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T.E.A.M. Year in Review. Roll the Dice with Special Needs Students. |
Adventure Curriculum for Physical Education. (Beverly, MA, Project Adventure, 2002-2003.) Adventure programs continue to grow in popularity in schools, most particularly in Physical Education. One issue that complicates these programs is a lack of coordination among schools that feed in to one another about what is done at each grade level. Here is a K-12 curriculum, one grade building on the prior ones, without duplication of activities or challenge course elements! The curriculum is published in three parts, Elementary (2003), Middle School (2002) and High School (2003). The same team of experts from Project Adventure has written each level, so there is a great deal of consistency in writing style and arrangement. Immediately upon turning to the table of contents, one can see the thought and care that went in to devising this curriculum. Each part has an introduction which covers the basic tenets of Adventure as well as safety, training recommendations, and equipment. Then the grade level sections are broken in to lessons, listed by the specific objective of that lesson. A section on assessment is in the back of the book, as well as activity lists (for all three levels of the curriculum), and a listing of the desired results of the K-12 Adventure Program, which are closely tied to state and federal standards. As far as elements are concerned, the middle school curriculum uses low challenge elements, and the high school curriculum uses high elements. Laying out a curriculum in this way, with activities done only at a particular grade level, reduces the syndrome which all facilitators have encountered, that of the I've already done that one statement. Each activity is carefully laid out, with time requirements, setup instructions, framing, procedure, discussion suggestions, safety tips and other comments relating to the activity. For a person with no adventure training, this still might be difficult to follow, but for the practitioner with some training, these directions should be quite easy to follow. For the challenge course elements, directions are minimal, this manual does not replace training in the use of the elements. Even if you do not choose to follow the curriculum exactly as laid out, these works are a very useful addition to any PE teachers library. Available from Project Adventure at its website: http://www.pa.org Project Adventure
will be presenting sessions at the 16th annual TEAM Conference on February
18th and 19th, 2005.
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