Using Writing to Promote Understanding in Physical Education

Although often considered a topic reserved for the English classroom, writing has been successfully used by other disciplines to stimulate active learning of course content. This article demonstrates that physical educators can use writing as a tool to help students to better understand and, ultimately, appreciate physical activity. This article also shows that some writing skills can and should be taught or at least reinforced in courses outside the English classroom, and that doing so will not only enrich student learning but also better introduce students to subject matter of physical education. Practical advice for teaching the writing skills students will need to successfully complete both formal and informal writing assignments is provided. In addition, strategies for creating appropriate and successful writing assignments in a secondary school physical education course are discussed. Finally, this article includes realistic recommendations for efficiently managing, evaluating and scoring/grading writing assignments.