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Designing games to allow all students to experience success

This is an excerpt from Creating Games With a Purpose With HKPropel Access by Jan Bishop,Constance Kapral,Amanda Amtmanis.

Instructional Design and Delivery

Creating a game with a purpose involves more than the setup and rules that will govern the game. It also includes decisions about how the teacher will give instructions, what questions the teacher will ask to assess understanding, the respective roles of the teacher and students during implementation, and what methods of inclusion the teacher will employ. The games in this book and the stories of their creative evolution use multiple instructional tools and delivery methods; in this chapter, we describe the following four so that the reader can look for them while reading through the games: differentiation, universal design for learning (UDL), the MPE framework, and teaching styles.

Differentiation and Accommodation

Differentiation in teaching means providing easier and more challenging versions of a task so that a range of abilities can succeed. A single student or multiple students in a class may need differentiation. For example, a student trying to hit a target with a ball can stand closer or farther from the target. Moving the whole class closer or farther does not provide individuals with options that will help them be challenged and successful. Accommodations are adjustments for individuals with specific identified needs that are communicated to the teacher via an individualized education plan (IEP) or 504 plan. Sometimes, accommodations involve equipment adaptations, adjusting game rules, and so forth. But in other cases, the teacher can alleviate the need for accommodations through game designs that put the individual with a disability on a level playing field. For example, if the game requires everyone to play from a seated position, an individual in a wheelchair needs no accommodation.

Examples of differentiations and accommodations are provided in the game chapters, embedded in the framework discussions and game descriptions and sometimes in the form of a callout box. But to do these well, teachers must consider their own students’ needs and provide adjustments accordingly.

Universal Design for Learning

We have seen how differentiations and accommodations can help combat the idea that one size fits all, which is rarely true in physical education. What if we could design games so that they automatically allow all students to experience success? This can be achieved by constructing the game using the idea of UDL. Upon seeing the concept of universal design (UD) in other contexts, educators were intrigued. The classic example of UD is that of a building with an architectural design that includes a ramped entryway. Although we may initially view this design as facilitating access for those in wheelchairs, it also provides easy access for those pushing baby strollers and those on crutches. It also provides an easier walkway for older adults, a way to deliver equipment on wheels, and a place to stand for a photo op. UDL, although similar to UD, is different. UDL is a framework that “guides the shift from designing learning environments and lessons with potential barriers to designing barrier-free, instructionally rich learning environments and lessons” (Nelson, 2014, p. 2).

UDL is organized around three broad principles, which are aligned with three networks in the brain that involve the learning processes (Ralabate, 2016):

1. Multiple means for engagement of students
2. Multiple means of representation of information presented to students
3. Multiple means for action and expression by students

The more educators consider UDL when designing games and activities, the fewer the accommodations they will need to make later. For example, in the scooter ball game presented in chapter 8, all the children have a partner who wears a blindfold. Thus, accommodations are not needed for a student with a visual impairment (who likely will not need a blindfold). In the game Two Lives (chapter 3), the setup involves strategically placing buckets with a variety of ball types so that students can select a ball that bounces at a speed they can handle, and those who cannot hold an extra ball while striking or don’t have a pocket to put it in can easily access one. The teacher can also add “ball kids” to the game to provide balls as needed by classmates. If this is not in the design of the game, students may solve the problem themselves by putting the extra balls down on the court, where they become a safety concern. When students have IEPs, 504 plans, or behavioral intervention plans, we often consider how we can differentiate our instruction to accommodate these students. When we approach our planning through the lens of UDL, not only will students with identified issues be accommodated, but the unknown number of students with unidentified issues will have a better educational experience as well.

Meaningful Physical Education

We have seen how designing a game to be inclusive can be achieved through either modifications for individuals (differentiations, accommodations) or through UDL game design. Inclusive games ensure access but do not ensure engagement and personal relevance. The idea that people are more intrinsically motivated when something is personally relevant and connects to, or builds on, prior knowledge is supported by research. MPE is a framework that emphasizes the growth of the whole individual: physical, social, emotional, and cognitive growth. MPE is based on the research-based belief that the following six principles are present in meaningful experiences in physical education (Fletcher et al., 2021): social interaction, challenge, fun, motor competence, personally relevant ­learning, and delight. Although we (authors) are still learning how to view teaching entirely through the lens of MPE, we feel that our work aligns quite well. MPE is both democratic and reflective. One of our goals has been to include students in the decision-making and game-creating processes. This moves teaching from an “I” or “you” perspective to a “we” or “us” perspective. Teaching with MPE requires that students reflect to discover why something is fun, challenging, and so forth and identify how it is personally relevant. The following list notes the six principles and the names of the games in this book that we feel support each principle.

1. Social Interactions: Designing a Menu for Your Restaurant, Feedback Power, I Feel Tag, Stand in My Shoes, Fitness Poster Project, Fitness-Testing Collective Challenges, Dogsled Racing, Black History Month Fitness Trail, Playscape Maps, IEP Deep Dive: Coin Tag
   Students in the younger grades begin by interacting with a partner, and older students work in small groups and practice give-and-take or shared decision-making.
2. Challenge: Movement Sentences
   Children design their own tumbling pass that showcases their best skillful performance, and everyone chooses a skill at their own level—a child who can perform a forward roll with a round body and pointed toes with feet together meets the challenge just like a child who can perform a diving forward roll to a standing position with appropriate form.
3. Fun: Playing Around With Fitness: Plank Towers and Pair Scares, Dentist Tag
   The Pair Scares activity in Playing Around With Fitness is so much fun! This activity lets children have fun being the monster under the bed, hopefully also helping to allay fears. In Dentist Tag, students get to tag someone with a big noodle toothbrush, do the floss dance, and twirl in a circle to simulate the dentist’s drill. In this activity, a necessary and sometimes anxiety-producing life event (going to the dentist) becomes a fun routine as children floss dance and grin and spin away the cavity.
4. Motor Competence: Color- and Number-Code Dribble; 3, 2, 1 Pattern Games
   • In Color- and Number-Code Dribble, practicing dribbling with the feet in different pathways, speeds, and combinations develops control and competency.
   • Students use a variety of locomotor skills in 3, 2, 1 Pattern Games to move their bodies over, under, around, through, and so forth at various speeds and levels and with different body parts leading the way.
5. Personally Relevant Learning: Bridging Language Barriers—Fitness Friends, Fire Safety Tag, I Feel Tag
   • In Bridging Language Barriers—Fitness Friends, children take Finklehopper home and exercise with the frog. The students describe the activities that they engaged in at home, written in journal entries that they then share orally in class. Children may be doing activities that no one else has tried yet, but they are meaningful to the individual and may inspire other children to try the activities or even earn the respect of others because that child has done something that has so much personal meaning.
   • Learning about fire safety is meant to prepare students to deal with something very scary by having them follow strategies that are easy to remember. Teachers are hopeful that the Fire Safety Tag game becomes personally relevant in easing fears about “what if” fire scenarios.
   • In I Feel Tag, children practice reacting to scenarios that they experience in real life and express themselves in respectful ways that describe how those circumstances make them feel. This is the epitome of personally relevant learning. All people need to be able to explain how situations make them feel, and the perpetrator needs to realize that negativity hurts others.
6. Delight: Although this objective is difficult to impossible to achieve during school, delight was evident in some of the reflections that children wrote about when they brought Finklehopper home and exercised with the frog (Bridging Language Barriers—Fitness Friends).
   Keep in mind that differentiations and accommodations help establish an environment that leads to meaningfulness.

Alex Beckey (Fletcher et al., 2021) uses the metaphor of an equalizer to explain how the features of MPE are not a checklist to achieve but are integrated and influence each other. Depending on the needs of the students (as a group and as individuals), the teacher gives more or less priority to a feature, much like dampening or heightening a tone on an equalizer. For example, for one student, increasing the challenge may result in a greater sense of fun, whereas a different student may have more fun by getting to do something with a partner instead of alone (social interaction). In both cases, the student may be working on the same skill, such as catching. Once priority decisions are made for the principles, the teacher must use activities, questioning, and other strategies to help students be aware of that principle and how it provides them with meaningfulness.

Teaching Styles

Another important pedagogical decision for the game designer is which teaching style to use. The style or styles selected will influence the learners’ behaviors and learning outcomes. There are 11 identified styles along a continuum, with the understanding that there are additional variations between the identified styles. A teacher who has “ability mobility” can select and use the style that will be the most effective (Mosston & Ashworth, 1990). There is a tendency in physical education to use the more teacher-centered styles, particularly the command (direct) and practice styles. The other styles are not better than these two; all styles are considered equal, but more teacher-centered ones are limited to producing certain types of learning outcomes and behaviors. For example, they result in students reproducing tasks and concepts provided by the teacher versus producing new (to the student) movements and knowledge through a discovery process. In chapter 2, the spectrum of teaching styles (Mosston & Ashworth, 1990) is discussed in more detail. You will see a variety of teaching styles used in the games described in chapters 3 through 10. Take note of how the styles align with the purpose by supporting specific learner behaviors and outcomes.

In simple words, the spectrum of teaching styles is about who gets to make decisions about the learning episode—the teacher or the students. Physical education teachers are used to being leaders and often equate decision-making and instructing others as their job. This approach can be very effective when teachers do it well, but it does not allow students to grow in terms of making decisions themselves. That said, passing decision-making power to the students must be congruent with student readiness.

The rationale for Standard 5 of the SHAPE America National Health Education Standards states: “Effective decision-making is needed to identify, adopt, and maintain health-promoting behaviors” (SHAPE America, 2024, para. 5). This standard includes skills and steps integral to the process of effective decision-making to support health and well-being. The decision-making process enables collaboration to improve the quality of life within individual, interpersonal, community, societal, and environmental contexts. Although this rationale speaks to the importance of decision-making for health enhancement, children learn best through play. Providing them with opportunities to develop and practice these skills through play experiences in physical education classes will prepare them for applying these skills to their overall well-being.

Just as we advocate in this book for teachers to be creative and purposeful in their game and activity designs, so, too, do we want students to have this chance. When children are playing on their own, they make up rules, decide when to switch to a new activity, give others roles to play, and so forth. We can give them a nurturing space to support them in becoming leaders, collaborators, and critical thinkers.

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