PLAYBuilder is a great tool for running developmentally appropriate physical literacy programming. This article outlines the top 5 strategies to get you off to a smooth start when first using the tool. This will allow you to use your time most effectively while also ensuring you are running the most relevant programming possible for the age range you are leading.

Top 5 Strategies

Develop a Physical Literacy Plan

The first step of any successful physical education plan is to lay out your goals and then work back from there on what steps you need to take to reach those goals. If you are a teacher, your goals may be tied to your physical education standards of your province. For British Colombia for instance, the physical health education goals for the 2019-20 school year include Communication, Thinking, Personal & Social skills as the main categories. These can be used as the basis of planning for teachers all across BC. However, if you are a sports coach of a local club, your goals may be different and thus lead to another type of strategy.

Once you have your goals set, it’s important to work back from those and develop strategies that will achieve them. What physical literacy activities and lessons do you need to run in order for your participants to learn what you set out? In the past, this would mean writing down activities and lesson plans on paper. More recently, physical literacy leaders have been updating digital copies of programming in either Microsoft word, excel, or other software. Leaders would find this programming in physical literacy books, past experiences, knowledge from their education background, or online. However, this is an arduous process for most people and can be hard to keep everything sorted for what you need on short timelines. Now, with digital solutions like PLAYBuilder, it is possible to keep all of your physical literacy activities in one place so you can easily run what you need at the right stage of development for your participants.

So, to develop your physical literacy plans, we suggest using PLAYBuilder to keep things sorted from the very start.

Use the search function

Once you’ve decided to use PLAYBuilder as your one-stop shop for physical literacy program, make sure to do a quick search of what activities and lessons are available in the system. There are over 900 pre-built activities and 250 lesson plans to choose from. Whether you are a physical education teacher, sports coach, or recreation centre leader, there are activities that everyone will find useful right away. The key is to use the advance search options to find what suits your needs. Here, you can filter by age, physical literacy stage of development, sport, and more. The content is even split up into packs that house grade-specific content (grades 1-10), stage-specific content (Active Start, Learn To Train, FUNdamentals), and sport-specific content (volleyball, soccer, badminton, martial arts, gymnastics). Take some time to scan through the various activities at your fingertips.

Try out Live Coaching

One of the best things you can do when using a new technology for the first time is to just TRY IT! It is easier for your brain to process if you test out one activity for yourself rather than reading about how it works. So first and foremost, click on any activity in PLAYBuilder and then scroll down to click on “Live Coach”. This will then guide you through step-by-step directions for which skills will be built upon, the equipment needed, time the activity will take, and specific instructions on what to do. The best part is that Sport for Life has developed all of the programming in PLAYBuilder with long-term physical literacy development in mind. Which means that whatever you run, it will be high quality and also easy to understand and execute! So give it a try, and you will see how running an activity works. You can do this from your phone, tablet, or computer.

Keep things organized with Favorites

Favorites are a brilliant way to quickly find activities and lessons that you like. For instance, if you ran a balance activity in your physical education class and saw that the participants loved it, then make sure to click the “star” on the top right of the activity. Doing this will then populate your dashboard the activity so it shows up directly on your homepage. Once you start running more and more activities, you will build a large list of options that you can pull from for your future lessons.

Utilize Playlists

Once you have your content picked that you like, you can place them in your playlists. Every PLAYBuilder user will have a different playlist section depending on what kind of activities and lessons suit your needs. To add an activity to a playlist, simply click the 3 dots on the right side of any activity or lesson and then click the playlist you want to add it to. The playlist can be any name you like (ie. soccer practice, P.E. class 2, etc.). Customize what goes into a playlist so that you can quickly access exactly what you need for each lesson you are planning to run. Note that only YOU will have access to this playlist as all users have a different preferences for what is included in their own playlists and favorites sections.

And that’s it! With these top 5 strategies, you will be up and running on PLAYBuilder in no time. We know it can take some time to get used to a new technology and system of doing things, so we encourage you to take some time to just play around with the tool. We’ve made sure to keep things very user friendly within the system and you will find that once you click around through various activities and lessons, it is easy to navigate and understand. Enjoy running your physical literacy programming through PLAYBuilder!

If you tried out PLAYBuilder and ran an activity or two, let us know how it went in the comments below!

If you are new to PLAYBuilder and do not yet have an account with us, request a demo today and we will show you everything you need to know to get up and running quickly with your physical literacy programming.