Cross Disciplinary Examples
Incorporating content from other subject areas into a physical education curriculum has many benefits. First, it helps students with their other classes. Second, it builds support for your program. And third, classroom teachers can use some of these activities in their class, boosting physical activity throughout the day. We have lots of examples of how to do this below. Once you get the hang of it, incorporating other content in your lessons will become easier to do.
- 4 Strategies for Integrating Classroom Content Into Physical Education
- Change It Up With Integrated Learning Day
- Collaborative Planning: Integrating Curriculum Across Subjects
- How Do You Integrate Other Subjects into PE?
- STEM in the Gym: Tips and Activity Ideas for Physical Education
- Teaching Physical Education: Academic Infusion
SHAPE America Appropriate Practices
- 3.7.1 Physical education forms part of a multidisciplinary curriculum, but integration doesn’t compromise teaching the concepts important to developing a physically educated individual.
Categories for Cross Disciplinary Activities
The categories below represent the types of activities used most in cross disciplinary lessons.
Click on the links for example activities or check this PDF that shows examples of each category for Math, Reading, Science, History, Geography, Art, Climate Change, and Space.
- Art: Incorporates drawing or other art.
- Assembling/Building Objects: Students physically create/build an object.
- Biomechanics: Activities that teach biomechanical principles.
- Coding: Activities that teach coding.
- Game Based Learning: Turn traditional games (ie. Monopoly) into physical activity.
- Incorporate Reading and Writing: Add a reading or writing component to your lesson (reflections, assessment, creative writing, etc).
- Incorporate Math: Add a math component.
- Informational: Passively provide information.
- Matching: Races where students find matching pairs.
- Physical Representation: Uses physical activity to represent numbers.
- Review: Students provide answers using physical activity.
- Simulation: Acting out a concept (ie. settlers traveling on the Oregon Trail).
- Sorting: Races where students sort concepts into categories (more examples).
- Story Walks: Students read snippets of a story along a pathway.
- Storytelling: Students act out a story from a book.
- Target (make it, take it): Students keep targets they hit (targets are informational).
- Target (projector): Students hit targets projected on a screen.
- This or That: Students choose an activity based on their answer to a question.
- Utilizing Music: Students move along to educational music.
Examples from Social Media
Check the #STEAMPE and #STEMintheGym hashtags for examples of cross-disciplinary activities.
Biomechanics and Physical Activity
Math and Physical Activity
- Math Trails: Students stop at designated sites along a route and explore math in the environment. See Urban Math Trails for example activities in urban communities.
- Students can add numbers to determine who is the tagger: "Students play a modified version of rock, paper, scissors. On 'go,' students place 1 to 4 fingers out. The first student to add both students' numbers together becomes the tagger."
- Students can calculate calories expended in activities: "Food A has 'X calories' and jumping jacks burn 'X calories per hour.' Perform jumping jacks for as long as needed to burn off the calories of Food A."
- Students can calculate statistics for a student's performance: "Student A made 19 of 23 attempts. What is his/her success rate?"
- Students can calculate the score from a given game scenario: "Team A scored 14 two-pointers, 4 three-pointers, and 7 free throws. What is team A's score?"
Miscellaneous and Physical Activity
Music and Physical Activity
Reading & Writing and Physical Activity
- Have students act out stories from books like Dr. Seuss, Go Dog Go, or Harry Potter.
- Have students write stories/poems that include the lesson/unit objectives (ie. skills with cues). These poems can also be used for learning motor skills.
- Include journal entries, reflections, task sheets, and exit slips in the curriculum.
- Post vocabulary terms on a "Word Wall."
- Start each lesson with the "Word of the Day" from the unit. Teachers can also do "Joke of the Day," which often include words with double meanings that must be explained to understand the joke.
- Teach the class common phrases in multiple languages; such as: hello, goodbye, thank you, your welcome, etc.
- Utilize "choose your own adventure" activities.
The Arts and Physical Activity
- Incorporate coloring in your handouts. See this example made with LunaPic.
- Physical activities can incorporate a drawing component.
- Students can create their own equipment for existing activities or new activities created by the students.
The Environment and Physical Activity
The purpose of this document is to spur ideas on how to address environmental learning objectives in physical education. Topics for activities included in this document:
- Tragedy of the Commons Pre-Activity
- Journey of Photons
- Changing Earth’s Temperature (2 versions)
- Water Usage (4 versions)
- Journey of Water Molecules
- Carbon Footprint (4 versions)
- Total Cost of a Phone: From Materials to End of Life
- Migration due to Rising Sea Levels
- Greenhouse Gas Tag
- Wildfire Containment
- Forms of Energy Production
- Community Cleanup
- Upcycling
- Recycling
- Activities from National Environmental Education Foundation
- National Parks - Stations
- Planet Earth Trivia - This or That
- Examples using Dance
Find more activities here: National Junior Ranger Booklets and Winter TRACKtivities