Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education offers more than 60 large-group warm-up activities, character-building activities, and team-building challenges. The book, which comes with a web resource, will help you prepare students for success in college and beyond.

Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is a highly practical and theoretically sound resource that will help you build a positive learning environment, teach valuable life skills, and inspire in students a desire to live active, healthy lives. It reinforces the many ways in which physical education and sport are the ideal setting to build college and career readiness skills. Teachers will learn how to help students develop a growth mindset and recognize that obstacles, challenges, and failures provide the greatest learning opportunities. The book is written with both American and Canadian national standards in mind: You can help your students achieve Standards 3, 4, and 5 of SHAPE America’s National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education and PHE Canada’s goals for physical education (“enable individuals to make healthy, active choices that are both beneficial to and respectful of their whole self, others, and their environment”). It will also aid you in achieving Standard Six of the objectives set by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). This text provides • 35 new large-group warm-up activities; • 20 character-building activities; • 11 team-building challenges; • assessment, reflection, and goal-setting strategies; and • a web resource with ready-to-use printable and editable activity materials (such as focus words and definitions, reflection scenarios, station and team challenge cards, and more). The activities, which are ready-made for use in your curriculum, include a motivational strategy and resource tool using the acronym GROWTH that will help your students learn and adopt the growth mindset traits necessary to set and reach goals. The book addresses many hot-button topics, such as emotional intelligence, community building, teamwork, physical fitness, and goal setting—all in a concise, practical, and highly effective way. As such, you will be helping your students meet Common Core and College and Career Readiness objectives. And students with goal-setting skills and a growth mindset will be well prepared to meet the challenging standards that are promoted by the Every Student Succeeds Act. In addition, Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is the perfect antidote to bullying: Through the materials and activities, the students learn to be respectful competitors and supportive teammates. The text contains six chapters: • Chapter 1 explores the connection between emotional intelligence and a growth mindset. It reinforces the many ways in which physical education and sport are the ideal settings to build college and career readiness skills. • Chapter 2 describes the impact community building has on motivation and learning. It also contains fun community-building activities as well as guidance on how to develop a positive learning environment. • Chapter 3 outlines strategies for building character and offers reflection scenarios, focus words, inspirational sayings, and recommended video clips. • Chapter 4 supplies more than 20 fun, engaging, and motivational character-building activities and games. • Chapter 5 provides outdoor collaborative team-building challenges. • Chapter 6 delves into various aspects of developing a growth mindset through concepts such as assessment, reflection, and goal setting. Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is a powerful and valuable resource because it develops the whole student. It helps students meet important national standards while also preparing them for success in life. This book will help you develop resilient citizens who choose to live active, healthy lifestyles; understand the importance of collaboration and teamwork; and are intrisically motivated to succeed in all areas of their lives.

Teamwork is critical to the success of any group—students, athletes, businesspeople, community members, and others. Team Building Through Physical Challenges: A Complete Tool Kit, Second Edition, takes a proactive approach to building teams as it explains the concepts of team building, shows how to set up teams to facilitate growth, and provides 67 mentally and physically challenging games and activities that will foster team building and the development of numerous social and emotional skills. These activities are an ideal way to start the school year, a sport season, corporate training, an adventure trip, or any endeavor that requires working together. New and updated materials for this resource include the following: Updated content on how to implement the activities A new emphasis on social and emotional learning A new web resource with video demonstrations, reproducibles, and a sample team-building course outline Team Building Through Physical Challenges features 67 ready-to-use, field-tested activities and challenges for introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. They are presented in a clear and practical format that addresses setup, rules, equipment needs, and variations for each challenge. The web resource offers video clips showing team building in action, as well as reproducible forms to make implementation easier. The web resource includes challenge and organizer cards for all challenges; these cards give the teams all the information needed to begin the activities. Another important feature of the book is the rationale it offers to obtain support and funding for the implementation of team building in schools, organizations, and businesses. Participants will focus on and build a variety of skills and character traits: Trust building Conflict resolution Leadership Self-control Collaborative problem-solving Effective communication Critical thinking Creativity Optimistic thinking Listening skills Appropriate risk-taking Resilience Growth mindset Team Building Through Physical Challenges assembles the best team- and character-building resources developed by the authors since the first edition of this popular book was published, plus new activities and supporting material. The authors are recognized experts in the field who have been creating, compiling, and experimenting with team-building activities for nearly 50 years. Team Building Through Physical Challenges is the only comprehensive book of team-building activities that focus on physical challenges. Through the clear instruction and guidance on team building, the useful web resource, and the exciting and challenging activities, participants will learn to become respectful competitors, valuable problem solvers, selfless leaders, and high-character members of their school, team, company, or community.

Team Building Through Physical Challenges explains the concepts involved in team building, shows how to set up teams to facilitate growth, and provides 67 mentally and physically challenging games and activities that will foster team building and the development of numerous social and emotional skills.

Active Bodies, Active Brainsoffers a wealth of physical activities to help kids develop physical, social, and cognitive skills. Based on cutting-edge research in brain compatibility, these games and activities help children -increase their ability to focus; -integrate their movement with thinking, thus enhancing development of neural pathways; -improve memory; -open up more areas of the brain to participate in learning; -reduce stress and enhance positive feelings to increase their learning; and -include physical activity in their daily lives. Active Bodies, Active Brainsprovides you with 66 activities and games--and it shows you how to easily modify and extend those to create numerous additional games. Indeed, by applying the techniques in this book, you can create an endless supply of brain-compatible physical activities while helping your participants build cognition, health-related fitness, and physical skills. Based on current brain-based practices, including Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, Active Bodies, Active Brainsincludes 66 cross-curricular critical-thinking activities that are aligned with national physical education standards. Because the activities call for common equipment and supplies that you most likely already have, your costs and prep time will be low. That prep time is further reduced by an activity finder that helps you find the appropriate activity at a glance. In each activity, kids are put in situations where they have to think critically--they learn how to think while they have fun moving. This movement-learning relationship is bolstered by research showing that movement enhances comprehension. Choose from numerous ways to both prompt learning and add variety. In addition to adapting games, you'll find ideas on the following: -Sequencing the activity differently -Considering the task from differing points of view -Identifying the reasoning used -Asking kids to think about their thinking processes -Figuring out what information is relevant to the task at hand Many teachers find they have less activity time because of the No Child Left Behind legislation, and the reduced activity time doesn't help kids learn. With its high-quality activities that are easy to facilitate, Active Bodies, Active Brainsis the perfect antidote for reduced activity time. Infused with brain-compatible strategies and critical-thinking challenges, this book will help students transfer the physical and thinking skills practiced and learned to other physical activities. And they'll become more physically skilled--and mentally adept--in the process.