PE Students Get a "Work Out" in the Idea and Design Lab
“PE can be an amazing learning environment for almost any academic concept,” says Sue Sweeney, Assistant Athletic Director at Peck. Sue and her students proved this when they took to the Idea and Design Lab for a constructive learning experience about competitive athletics earlier in the semester.
Students had been studying aspects of the winter Olympics, and, in particular, they focused on the sport of bobsled racing. Working individually, students picked a nation and a flag and spent several periods in the ID Lab constructing functional prototypes of their nations’ bobsleds. Finally, teams competed with each other to race down a miniature bobsled track constructed out of rain gutters.
At The Peck School, problem-based, student-centric learning, and STEM or STEAM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) promote collaboration, teamwork, trial and error, and other skillsets that have long been nurtured in our physical education program.
Journalist Valerie Strauss sums up the educational benefits of physical activity in her article for The Washington Post when she says, “Letting kids move in class isn’t a break from learning. It IS learning.”
The Peck School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.