Office of Curriculum, Technology, & Assessment

Physical Education: Conclusion

The South Dakota Health Physical Education Standards give direction for moving toward excellence in teaching physical education. Teachers and policy-makers can use the standards to design curricula, to allocate instructional resources, and to provide a basis for assessing student achievement and progress. The Physical Education Standards identify knowledge and skills that can be assessed. They furnish guidance to all that are interested in improving physical education instruction, including local school districts, teachers, universities, state education and health agencies, parents, communities and national organizations.

Based on the indisputable evidence that a healthy body promotes a healthy mind, many schools have acknowledged their responsibility to encourage lifetime physical activity among young people. Those that are having the greatest success have implemented physical education as part of a coordinated school health program, require students to engage in daily physical activity, and have put in place programs that support the objectives of Healthy People 2010 (USDHHS 2000) and follow CDC’s Guidelines for School and Community Programs to Promote Lifelong Physical Activity Among Young People (1997). These and other tools exist for schools to use.

Although the Physical Education Standards identify what knowledge and skills students should know and be able to achieve, they leave precisely how this is to be accomplished to teachers and curriculum specialists who formulate curricula. The Physical Education Standards are broad and flexible to accommodate the strengths and needs of students, families and local communities in South Dakota.

Physical Education and Learning

---Eric Jensen, Teaching with the Brain In Mind, ASCD