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Survivor D.P.S.
Survivor D.P.S. I'm sure you've heard all about Survivor! It is easily the favorite unit of the year in the eyes of the kids. They lose themselves in it and it is really fascinating to watch the interactions unfold. This is truly a unique design that we have here at D.P.S. To this day, we have yet to see anything remotely similar in size, scope and depth of effectiveness when it comes to teaching kids tolerance for one another. We encourage you to come in and watch what happens in this unit when your kids come to gym. It will look nothing like your memories of elementary school gym class! Survivor D.P.S. incorporates traditional adventure education initiatives such as Mohawk Traverse, swamp crossing and Prouty's Landing and fuses them together in a single challenge format while also including academic areas such as math and science. The object is to culminate traditional adventure education with a grand challenge that will pair students in a manner in order to test their ability to tolerate, respect, trust and care for peers they may not be close to. During Survivor D.P.S., 4th and 5th grade students are broken into tribes of 5 or 6 students. Tribes are strategically selected to avoid pairing friends and athletes. Once tribes are selected, students will be engaged in 6 physical challenges from the preceding adventure ed. unit. At D.P.S., we use swamp crossing, Mohawk traverse, rock wall, cargo net, spiders web and Prouty’s landing. During the challenges, tribes will acquire points for success. For example, each panel climbed on the rock wall is worth 10 pts. , each section of the Mohawk traverse is worth 25 pts . Spliced into the challenge will be questions from subjects like art, music, math, science, social and ELA. Each question will have a point value. Some are worth 25 pts, some 50, some 100. Classroom teachers supply the questions as well as rank them in difficulty. (i.e. 25 pts being a question that everyone should get, 100 pts. being one that only a few students will get correct.) Tribes will then select questions during their respective challenges that they may use to increase their overall point total. Questions may not be viewed before choosing. Students will see an envelope with the subject on it along with the value. For example, the tribe will decide if they want to choose math for 100 pts. or science for 25 pts. Once they have completed the physical portion of the challenge then, they will sit down together as a tribe and answer the questions that they chose. When all stations and have been completed, the competition is over. The teacher will then “grade” each tribes packet and the tribe who has acquired the most points wins!
D.P.S. Phys. Ed.
East Greenbush CSD
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