Students at this stage combine various skills in cooperative activities that facilitate the development of specialized sport skills used in lead-up or modified games along with folk and line dancing, stunts and tumbling. The students develop rhythmic skills in folk and line dances and demonstrate rhythmic routines and movement qualities to music. Stunts, tumbling, and rhythmic patterns are introduced in preparation for more advanced tumbling and gymnastics skills in the eighth grade.
Sixth-graders assess their own level of health-related fitness and perform moderate to vigorous physical activists while monitoring their heart rates, learn the benefits of regular physical participation, and know how to develop a one-day physical fitness plan using the FITT
(frequency, intensity, time, and type) principles and addressing each component of healthrelated physical fitness.
Students learn to provide specific positive feedback and develop and teach a cooperative game that uses rules, skills, and offensive strategies. They identify the individual roles and responsibilities necessary to make their group successful.
Seventh grade allows students the opportunity to refine the body management and objectmanipulation skills learned in the sixth-grade. They are capable of planning, creating, demonstrating, and analyzing more complex movement patterns and strategies. Seventhgraders like to experience challenges and test their limits through a variety of activities including individual and dual activities, adventure/ outdoor activities, combative activities, track and field activities.
Seventh graders continue to assess their own health-related physical fitness and develop goals and plan and implement a weekly personal fitness program. The students apply the FITT principles of exercise for each component of health-related physical fitness and select activities that reflect the components.
Rhythm activities include multicultural dances from cultures around the world and help students develop greater understanding and acceptance of their own and others’ heritages. They accept greater responsibility for their own improvement and identify appropriate and inappropriate risks involved in all physical activities.
The emphasis at the eighth grade is on team activities, square dancing, and gymnastics/tumbling. With emerging cognitive skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning, the eighth-grade students engage in modified team sports and learn the complexities of offensive and defensive team strategies.
Students learn the importance of good health and fitness and plan alternative activities for their personal fitness plan so they are prepared for inclement weather, travel, or injury. The eighth grader is capable of attaining greater motor achievement and is encouraged to set realistic personal goals and monitor their own progress.