Track and Field Activities for Special Education
…activities and ideas ALL your students can engage in!
In our school district we have our own version of adapted track and field games called the SODA. SODA stands for Students of Differing Abilities. I am not sure if other school boards and districts run this kind of programming, but I am very grateful to be apart of a school district that does!
My students are literally OBSESSED with this day! We usually have all our special education self contained classrooms, as well as some support classrooms come join in with our games. In previous years, we would take a big old school bus to one central location and participate in the games as a whole school district. Given the continued struggles with Covid- 19, we are running the games at our individual home schools.
Our students are very schedule oriented. They really thrive on schedules and having a set plan for the day. We did have a schedule for the day, however I felt that we needed some visuals to really get our day going! I decided to create a mini package to really set my students up for success during this year’s track and field meet.
In this package, students are able to follow a schedule of all 9 or 10 events included in our track and field day. This allows students to follow along with a regimented plan for the day. Predictability promotes calmness and FOR SURE easies anxiety for a majority of my students. We humans THRIVE on predictability and we actually crave it. I try and build predictability and visuals in as much of our school day as humanly possible.
When the day of fun is over, I always like to engage in a variety of follow up activities to reinforce learning, continue the excitement and extend understanding for our students. This continues our mantra of predictability and scheduling for our students. I LOVE the idea of continuing learning and extending it over a variety of subjects. As we know, repetition is KEY for our learners.
I love doing activities that my students can eventually do as independently as possible. I always get so sad when my students are either left out of main school events, OR are just not able to engage in the main school events because of their varying needs.
Different does NOT equal less- let’s say it for the people in the back!
One of the most important things that you can do for your students is ADVOCATE for them. If you need resources that fit your individual students need ADVOCATE. If you need to adapt and modify school wide activities and events to support your students, DO THAT. At the end of the day, we are responsible for these students well being, and inclusion is directly tied into well-being!
Do you do track and field events for your students? If so, I’d love to know! I am always looking for ideas to connect and help my students.
If you want to connect with me, you’d find me laughing my way through Instagram and Tik Tok. Come say HI and possibly laugh at my hopefully relatable teaching videos & ideas.
- Tik Tok
