Are you looking for a great way to assess your physical education classes during team and individual sports? Do you want to put your students in charge of administering the assessment? Do you want to give your students a great way to see how students are being successful during the unit? The team sports assessment procedure is a great way to see growth of your students from the beginning to the end of a unit. TSAP is able to give you measurable data that can show true growth of each individual student in class. Students will be able to administer this assessment, and while they are administering the assessment they will see examples of what successful skills and strategies look like. I wouldn't have known about the game performance assessment without the help of Dr. Steven Harvey. Thank you Dr. Harvey for your help with this process and I really wanted to share this process with other physical educators, so they could learn as much as I did. I hope you consider Implementing TSAP into your assessment repertoire. Lets take a closer look at TSAP specifically through a badminton TGfU unit.

If you are looking to incorporate the TSAP assessment into your classes, then you will need to plan and prepare ahead of time. The first day should be a tournament or game day. You must get your students involved, playing, and assessing. For my badminton specific unit, I have 6 nets and I set up mini tournaments (4-5 players) at each net. I had tournament sheets printed and ready for each net, TSAP forms out and ready for each individual student, and even some ping pong tables set up for extra students and a little bit of fun. Before games started, I had to quickly cover the rules I needed them to follow in the games, and I also had to cover what they were assessing on the TSAP form. This did take a little while to introduce, so please be prepared and ready for what you want to say. Also remember for this to truly work, you must keep the exact same tournament in tact for the final day of the unit. If you do this, it will give you valid growth numbers! Posted below are some examples of documents I created for this to work in my class.

here camethe tricky part, or what could've become the tricky part. I have three games worth of data on 224 students and now needed to get the number in their system where I could understand it. I had health class with my students the next day so I designed a Google form that they could use to plug in their numbers. This task could've taken me hours if not days but with her help it was done in about 3 to 4 minutes of class time. The efficiency index and performance ratings are figured out by using these formulas. Efficiency index is (volley / 2 + successful shots) / (10 + lost ball) and the performance score is calculated by (received ball / 2) + (efficiency index * 10). You can see how I set things up below on the google form and google sheet so you don't have to do any calculations.

It was time to get down to business! Now that the TSAP was done and completed I knew it was time to get down to TGfU skills and strategies that my classes needed to be successful. Here's a rundown of my day two activities, so you can see how I run a TGfU badminton unit. For everyone's understanding, I see my 7th and 8th grade students for 41 minute classes with a class size of 24-30 students every other day.

This day was used to review some of the previous material taught and then to expand on it even more.

By this time of the unit with my middle school students are ready to showcase what they have learned by being involved in a singles tournament. I'll have two different tournament sign-ups and I let my class pick which side of the gym they would like to play on. There are three courts on each side of them gym and this works perfect for twelve people to rotate from playing and being a referee. I keep the games short so students are not out for very long. Check out a sample tournament bracket below.

I also used the SeeSaw app to create another opportunity for my students to showcase what they had learned. Day #1 the students needed to have a minute of footage of them playing during a singles match. The only requirement was to have them watch their video, to reflect on different shots they used, and to see how much they moved their opponent around the court. Below you will see a sample video from an 8th grade class.

The second day of the singles tournament I wanted students to "play out" a perfect game situation as if they could perform any shot. The thought was that I could hear the knowledge they accumulated over the course of the unit, even if they couldn't successfully perform the skill. Below is a picture of the SeeSaw assessment sheet that I handed out to my students to help them through their assessment and also a video of a students reflection.

Alright, well now you know the information and activities my students participated in. Everything was extremely active, students had many touches, and were always working on skills and strategies in a game situation. This are some of the key components of TGfU and a game centered approach. I believe this approach builds competence, which develops confidence, this leads to motivated students, and allows students to participate fully. I'll now share what I discovered when the unit was over.

As I stated earlier, you need to run the final TSAP tournament the exact same way. This will make your data results valid. I set up the same tournaments with the same students and allowed them to play for the same amount of time. Everything was the same. Now I just needed to collect all the data and find out how much they grew as badminton players. Below are my results.

After having all my students plug their results into the same google form, I was quickly able to sort through the google sheet to get some final numbers. Here is a few things that I learned.

1st Test Average Efficiency Index
1.35

1st Performance Score Average
26.18

2nd Test Average Efficiency Index
2.08 = 54% increase
​
2nd Performance Score Average
52.73 = 101% increase

I knew my students were getting better, but these numbers blew my mind. To have proof that TGfU Badminton really worked and it really worked well. In my findings I believe doing these things really helped my students grow:

Lots of birdies hit (singles games, 1v1 rallies, etc)

Development of skills / strategies together in a game situation

Lots of practice time - An average of 82% (27/33 minutes) of class was dedicated to active lessons

Assessments / formative checks on 4/6 days

Active playing time + analyzing how others play = high levels of learning

I hope you learned a little bit about the Team Sports Assessment Procedure and I hope you will consider giving it a try. I think that it can validate what we are doing as physical educators. I also hope you learned a little bit about running a TGfU unit as well. When I started teaching this way, I really think my students learned how to play the games much better. An understanding of the game, in game situations, practicing skills can lead to amazing results for your students. Let me know if you have used TSAP or your other thoughts on TGfU in the comments below or feel free to send me an email if you have any other questions.

It all started at #SHAPEBoston! Well that's not totally true, but that is how these two superpowers came together in my classroom just a couple of weeks later. Here is how the story goes.

I have been working through implementing the TGfU model in my physical education classes over the last 4 years. I picked up on the model through Twitter. I have been learning and introducing more units every year. I really enjoy using the model in my classes and I have seen many successes in my students over the years. There are so many things to love about the model, but my favorite aspect is how it really helps develop competence and confidence in all my students through more touches in small sided games and lead up activities. This leads to much higher levels of motivation and participation from almost all of my students. Thanks to Dr. Dean Kriellaars for this quote.  I could see this early on when I first implemented the model and it made me want to learn more and implement more, and so I did.

The more I learned about the model, the more grew connected to other like minded physical educators using it in their classroom. It also got me connected to current researchers that are focused on the model as well. These connections grew and I was lucky enough to be asked to present at #SHAPEBoston with Dr. Steven Harvey and a crew of practitioners from around the world. It was exciting to hear more about their story and to share the successes of current practitioners with passionate educators at the SHAPE America National Convention. This was my first National presentation and I thought it went pretty well.

While at #SHAPEBoston, I was able to attend a fabulous Polar session that was led by a couple of amazing educators, Collin Brooks and Mike Doyle.  I was excited that I was able to attend and that I could learn from these two educators.  I was selected to participate in the session and I realized that a reward for participating was a Polar A360!  Yeah!  Got my hands on one.  I do like new technology :). I learned a ton from everyone at Polar, Collin, and Mike.  I was especially impressed with Collin Brooks's presentation called "The Heart Rate Awakens."  He worked extremely hard to make a Star Wars related fitness activity to keep his students engaged and motivated while learning about fitness concepts.  It was so cool to see and participate in this session live.  I was bummed when the session was over, but I was hopeful now to get some more Polar A360s.  Now how would I accomplish that?  

Clearly by the look on their faces they enjoyed using them.  Check out their average daily steps on a weekend.  They are always very active and love the outdoors, but the Polar A360 motivated them to move, challenged them to get their heart rates up, and they truly enjoyed the watch's interface in general.  I knew my students were going to love the learning experience with them now, thanks to my "test subjects."

I would love to hear how you use Polar A360s, pedometers, or heart rate monitors and what your thoughts are on them.  Thanks for reading and I look forward to learning more from you as well!