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Linking the SHAPE America National Physical Education Standards with academic standards

This is an excerpt from Health and Physical Education for Elementary Classroom Teachers 3rd Edition With HKPropel Access by Retta R. Evans & Sandra Kay Sims.

National Physical Education Standards

Many states use national standards to assist in the development of state courses of study. In 2024, SHAPE America (the Society of Health and Physical Educators) revised the National Physical Education Standards. The new National Physical Education Standards are as follows:

Standard 1: Develops a variety of motor skills.

Standard 2: Applies knowledge related to movement and fitness concepts.

Standard 3: Develops social skills through movement.

Standard 4: Develops personal skills, identifies personal benefits of movement, and chooses to engage in physical activity. (SHAPE America, 2025, p. 9).

The National Physical Education Standards are broad statements that are to be used across preK-12 programs. This chapter will focus on the grade spans K-2 and 3-5. To understand grade-span expectations, teachers should use National Physical Education Standards, Fourth Edition (SHAPE America, 2025), which documents grade-span learning indicators to help teachers sequence their curricula and address specific expectations and goals for students. Using the standards and learning indicators for guidance, elementary classroom teachers can design learning experiences across the psychomotor, cognitive, social, and affective learning domains. The expectation is to provide K-5 learners with opportunities to practice, construct, apply, and evaluate their learning across all four domains.

As stated earlier, one strategy for classroom teachers to teach physical education is to focus on integrating physical education into the academic core subjects required in elementary classrooms. Integrating physical education into the academic curriculum may seem to be a daunting task for classroom teachers. However, it is necessary, especially given that many students are kinesthetic learners (Hannaford, 2005). This chapter outlines these four steps for integrating physical education activities into the academic curriculum:

1. Brainstorm integration ideas.
2. Link physical education standards with academic standards.
3. Develop grade-specific interdisciplinary activities.
4. Develop a plan to implement the activity.

These steps will help you move from brainstorming general ideas to creating a plan to teach the activity in class.

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Integrated Physical Education Lesson Ideas

The PE Central website has a section devoted to the classroom teacher and integrated lesson ideas (for more information, search its website for integrated lesson ideas). With over 265 lesson ideas, this section is a great place for classroom teachers to go for ready-made integrated lessons.

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Step 1: Brainstorm Integration Ideas

The first step in this approach is to brainstorm ideas for integrating physical education into academic subjects. Consider mathematics. Your goal is to identify ways physical education could support the acquisition of the mathematics skills expected of your students according to the standards. This might include outlining shapes with a rope or with the body, tossing balls or beanbags at specific geometric shapes, or traveling in a specific pathway. Elementary students need to be able to count in sequence, skip count, add, subtract, multiply, and divide. You can use several physical activities in a mathematics lesson to help students with these skills. For example, the student could move to the number of claps or beats, count the number of times a target is hit, or use movement to answer math flash cards. Older elementary students can measure time spent on a particular activity or task, construct graphs showing changes in heart rate during activity, or use digital activity tracker data to show movement counts of different activities as ways to meet the standards for measuring, graphing, and so on.

Ways to integrate science and physical education in the elementary classroom are not hard to imagine. Physical activity addresses the systems of the body, and you can integrate the muscular and skeletal system easily through identifying muscles and bones used for activities. Involving other systems may require more setup. For example, you might do a physical demonstration of the cardiovascular system in which you use physical education equipment to create a course; students travel through the course like a drop of blood: through the heart and lungs, out to the body, then back to the heart again. Another idea could be to illustrate the movement of the solar system by having the students physically moving like the planets would around the sun. You could also demonstrate Newton’s laws of motion, bringing the laws off the pages of a book into real-life view with physical movement.

Integrating physical education with social studies involves more creativity. Some examples of integrations include performing historical dances or reenacting historical events. Memorizing states or capitals may be easier for students in an activity setting (e.g., naming the states in alphabetical order while jumping rope), and using digital activity trackers in the classroom can help students walk across the United States without leaving the community.

The elementary English language arts curriculum offers an array of areas that can be integrated with physical education. Reading ideas include performing the instructions written on cards, reading about famous athletes or favorite sports, reading and assessing partners for skill performance using a checklist of cue words, and acting out the content of a book while reading it. Integrating writing could include writing reflections or journals about physical activity experiences. Also, students could write reports about how to make healthy choices in nutrition and physical activities. For the speaking and listening part of the curriculum, students could give oral reports on various sport-related topics. Class discussions could include students sharing experiences with others in groups or in front of the class. You can integrate language skills into physical education through activities involving spelling words, sounding out syllables while dribbling a basketball, and acting out verbs.

See lab 9.1 to brainstorm ideas for how physical education can be integrated into mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies.

Step 2: Link Physical Education Standards With Academic Standards

When the brainstorming activities are completed, teachers will then move to more specific integration by using the National Physical Education Standards. This second step will connect a physical education standard with an academic standard that the students are expected to meet. One way to get started is to brainstorm ideas of how an academic subject area could integrate with the National Standards. For example, National Standard 1 states that students will develop a variety of motor skills. In a language arts lesson, the student could spell words using large movements of the arms. A student in social studies could discuss the history of the fitness levels of men and women serving in the armed forces to explain the benefits of physical activity, as required by Standard 2. Table 9.1 provides examples of how the National Physical Education Standards can be integrated with four academic subjects.

See lab 9.2 to integrate the National Physical Education Standards with the core academic subjects (mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies). You can find state standards and courses of study by searching state websites for education standards.

More Excerpts From Health and Physical Education for Elementary Classroom Teachers 3rd Edition With HKPropel Access

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