Educational Tools
Help learners get the most out of your Physical Education lessons and coaching sessions by downloading and using the lesson plans and coaching manuals. You also have access to educational posters for your tuck shop and playground.
Lesson Plans
Whatever health or activity class you teach, there’s a tool right here to make it quicker and easier. You’ll find curriculum-aligned Lesson Plans on Physical Education and nutrition, Physical Activity Skills Manuals for teaching primary school kids and handy Information Guides for teachers and Champions at your school. Download them now.
Lesson 1 – I like to move
Learners move through a zig-zag course while practising throwing, bouncing, dodging and other ball skills. It’s a fun way to get comfortable working with a ball and to learn movements like rotation, elevation and balancing. It also illustrates the importance of a pre-exercise warm up.
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(245kb)
Lesson 2 – Get active
Active games are used to get kids rolling, hopping, monkey walking and copying other people’s movements. The aim is to learn the many benefits of an active lifestyle. It’s a case of actions speaking louder than words.
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Lesson 3 – Making healthy food choices
By classifying food pics from magazines as either healthy or unhealthy, the class learns how to define a nutrient, as well as how to identify and discuss the difference between nutritious and non-nutritious foods.
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Lesson 4 – The five food groups
This lesson is a guided tour of the food groups. It covers the kinds of foods that fit into each group, plus how to use them to plan a healthy, balanced diet. Healthy eating starts with a healthy understanding.
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Lesson 5 – Get active and eat healthily
Healthy living is all about positive reinforcement. That’s why this lesson recaps and reinforces the messages from the previous four. After completing the activities, learners should be able to explain the benefits of exercise and healthy eating, and list examples of the right foods to choose.
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Lesson 1 – Playing games
Learning is always more effective when it’s active and fun. That’s the thinking behind this fun-based lesson that uses games to illustrate different types of movement, and how to warm up before exercising.
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Lesson 2 – Music madness
Music may be the food of love, but in this lesson, it’s the food of health. We take the movements taught in Lesson 1 and build on them to teach learners the benefits of physical activity. Play on!
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Lesson 3 – Water pollution
What makes water clean or polluted? Why is polluted water dangerous? And where can clean, healthy water be found? This lesson will provide all the answers and teach kids to identify sources of both clean and polluted water.
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Lesson 4 – Water purification
Water, water everywhere, let’s learn how to keep it clean. After taking a closer look at water pollution and its challenges, learners should be able to describe a simple method for purifying our most valuable resource.
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Lesson 5 - Turn the TV off
Learners get cooking with some delicious, healthy recipes. The aim is to get them off the couch and into an active life. How? By teaching them to plan their own physical activities and healthy meals – and by driving home the benefits of doing just that.
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Lesson 1 – Components of an exercise session
Kids like to take things apart to see how they work. And that’s what we’re doing with the typical exercise session. Learners physically practise each component, including the all-important warm up and stretching. They also learn to identify aerobic or cardiovascular and strengthening activities.
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Lesson 2 – Building basic sporting skills
Sports stars are not born, but made. And this is the lesson to prove it. Learners take on activities that develop hand-eye and hand-foot coordination. They’ll be throwing, catching and hitting targets like pros.
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Lesson 3 – Does nutrition make a difference?
Art meets life as learners create a comic strip showing how eating right can make people both happier and healthier. After this visual lesson with a valuable message they should be able to list three ways that a healthy diet can improve body and mind.
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Lesson 4 – Fuelling up for your best performance
The body is like a car – you need to give it the right fuel to avoid breaking down. What’s the right fuel? A range of fresh and healthy foods, including brightly coloured fruit and veg. This child-friendly analogy will teach learners how to fill up with the right stuff and avoid unhealthy results.
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Lesson 5 – Healthy challenge quiz
How do you live a healthy life? This lesson asks learners to draw the answer to this question and creatively map their lifestyle goals. It’s an interactive way to help kids identify and then start improving their eating and exercise habits.
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Lesson 1 – Heart rate and physical activity
Let’s get to the heart of the matter and see how exercise benefits the beat that drives it all. After working up a sweat, learners are taught to measure a pulse. This illustrates how cardiovascular exercise increases the heart rate – even more so as the intensity of the exercise goes up.
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Lesson 2 – Muscle strength
It’s not just about speed – strength is an important part of getting and staying fit. To prove this point, learners are taught some fun and safe muscle- and strength-building activites, including throwing a shot-put. They also learn to identify strengthening activities and understand how and why they work.
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Lesson 3 – Cultural food fare
It’s a cooking experience with cultural flair. In this lesson learners will explore – and even prepare – foods from specific cultural groups. Once completed, they should be able to list three different South African cultures, as well as a dish that’s typically eaten by each.
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Lesson 4 – Plan a healthy eating day
What a difference a day makes… in this case, a day of healthy, balanced eating. For this lesson, kids are taught to plan a full-day healthy menu that includes all five food groups and at least one indigenous South African meal. Then they get to enjoy the menu they’ve planned.
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Lesson 5 – Nutrients and good health
We’re making a meal out of macronutrients. Learners are asked to cut out pictures of foods containing carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and then to explain how each one affects physical activity and sporting performance. It’s a simple way to learn which foods are best for which activity.
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Lesson 1 – Target practice
Throwing, kicking or hitting on target is the basis of just about every sport. So this lesson gets learners to actively improve their target skills with beanbags, balls and fun role-playing games. They also get to invent and teach their own target game with its own set of rules. Ready, aim, bullseye.
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Lesson 2 – Dance dynamics
Dancing is great exercise. It’s also a fancy form footwork that’s useful in various non-dance sports. That’s why this lesson involves choreographing, dancing and teaching a short dance sequence. As an encore learners will explore and explain cultural dances from South Africa and beyond.
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Lesson 3 – Protecting the quality of food
Should additives be added or subtracted? Learners take a closer look at food wrappers and packaging to identify the additives and decide whether they improve the nutritional value or quality of the food. Once completed, they should be able to list three types of additives and an example of each.
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Lesson 4 – Protecting your food
This lesson explores how good food goes bad. In other words, it compares spoiled food to preserved food. The aim is to fully understand the spoiling process and how to prevent it through preserving in various different ways.
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Lesson 5 – My wellness chart
Living an active lifestyle starts with a plan. That’s the thinking behind this lesson, which involves making a wellness chart and outlining steps towards healthier living. A good plan leads to action. Lesson accomplished.
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Lesson 1 – Target practice
By playing their way through a range of games learners are challenged to throw, catch, speed up, slow down and move their bodies into different shapes. This helps with cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and flexibility. Right on target.
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Lesson 2 – Cricket skills
A game of mini-cricket is the perfect way for kids to work on catching, batting and throwing. It’s also a great space for practising good sportsmanship and teamwork – important skills that make everyone a winner.
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Lesson 3 – Know your food
It’s a meet-and-greet with foods we regularly eat. This lesson involves analysing food labels to understand nutritional information a little better. Then learners will use this understanding to create food labels of their own.
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Lesson 4 – Know your food even better
This time learners will design a more complex food label, complete with all the nutritional and technical details required by law. Then they’ll analyse their own food labels to gauge whether the products are healthy enough to eat.
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Lesson 5 – Spread the word
Let’s take a creative look at health. How? By designing posters that illustrate the benefits of exercise and good nutrition. It’s vital that children fully understand the importance of a healthy lifestyle. So the more ways they express and explore that, the better.
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Lesson 1 – Invasion games
Invasion games are all about strategic attack and smart defense. In this lesson, learners get active and learn how to understand and play these tactical games. It’s a fun, exciting session that’s sure to keep their minds and bodies fit.
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Lesson 2 – Fitness test
You’re never too young to start thinking about your health. It’s time for learners to assess their own fitness and find out why it’s so important to keep activity levels up. They’ll also learn about the components of fitness and how it’s measured.
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Lesson 3 - Extreme diet makeover
Learners keep a five-day food and drink diary, and then use it to plan steps to improve their health. By the end of this lesson, they should be able to list the Food-based Dietary Guidelines and food groups, as well as explain how to keep a food diary going.
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Lesson 4 – Healthy drinks
A healthy diet isn’t just about food. The class investigates the nutritional value of various drinks, and then works out which ones fit a healthy diet best. This lesson shows learners how to check the kilojoules in certain drinks, compare different kinds of milk, juice and water, and understand how drinks contribute to health overall.
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Lesson 5 – Write an article
When it comes to staying healthy, you need to ask the right questions and find the right answers. That’s why we’re asking learners to research and write an article on either fair play in sport or ways to improve their eating habits. The result? Stronger researching skills and useful lessons learnt about diet or sport.
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Lesson 1 – Participate in a fitness circuit
The name of this lesson says it all. Learners will tackle a range of physical activities and assess their fitness levels. And the lesson doesn’t end when the school bell rings… each learner must also set a goal for the fitness level they’d like to achieve by the end of term.
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Lesson 2 – Participate in an aerobic fitness fun class
Ready, steady, go! Learners will lace up their running shoes and sprint their way to the truth about how fit they really are. It’s all about the distance each learner can run – may the fastest and fittest learner win.
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Lesson 3 - Participate in different balancing activities
Can you balance a broomstick on your fingertips while walking 50 metres? Well, you’d better start practicing so you can show the kids how it’s done. This lesson involves everything from balancing with your eyes closed, to running at full pace, catching a ball and then stopping without a stumble. Sounds easy? Try receiving a football pass while running backwards. Or catching a rugby ball while balancing on a chair? We thought so...
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Lesson 4 – Take part in a sporting scavenger hunt
If Sherlock Holmes was a learner, this would be his favourite game. Split the class into groups and test their problem-solving skills with a series of cryptic clues that lead to various hidden destinations. The goal: to be the first group to complete the scavenger hunt. The secret? Effective teamwork.
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Lesson 5 – Play team championship basketball
Basketball isn’t just about scoring points. It’s also about teamwork and following instructions. Use this lesson to teach learners how to improve their passing and shooting skills, as well as how to play an adapted game of team championship basketball.
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Lesson 6 – Test your fitness
Help learners to measure their fitness levels and discover why being fit boosts health and wellbeing. In this lesson, we discuss the components of fitness and how they’re assessed, as well as the fitness requirements of various sports.
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Lesson 7 – Obstacle course
Challenge learners to design a safe adventure game and teach it to the rest of the class. This fun, interactive lesson is designed to give learners the tools to plan and run a grade-based adventure tournament.
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Lesson 8 - Strategies for a healthy lifestyle
Keeping a food and drink diary is a great way to identify habits and set personal lifestyle goals. That’s exactly what learners will do in this lesson. They’ll also become familiar with the elements of a healthy lifestyle and the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for South Africans.
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Lesson 9 – Design a wellness brochure
It’s a hands-on, informative session that gets learners to research health information and create their own wellness brochure. The aim is to fully understand the five benefits of physical activity, and what goes into a diet and activity programme for better health.
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Lesson 10 – Portion distortion
Ever wondered how portion sizes have changed over time, and how this affects people’s health? It’s time for your class to find out – in the process, they’ll also learn how to maintain a healthy weight and why physical activity is such a vital wellness tool.
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Lesson 1 – Participate in a fitness assessment
Schools should encourage healthy bodies as much as they do healthy minds. Challenge learners to complete a range of physical activities in a bid to assess their own fitness levels. They might be surprised by the results...
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Lesson 2 – Participate in a fun fitness class
How can we expect kids to concentrate when they’re full of pent-up energy? We can’t. That’s why we’re burning it off in a fun fitness class comprising a range of child-friendly fitness activities. The parents will thank you later.
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Lesson 3 - Exploring pyramiding techniques
Want to see some pyramids? Why travel to Egypt when you can create your own right here? In this lesson, learners will build a human pyramid responsibly and safely. This includes practising single and pair balancing and gripping, as well as learning to plan and perform a short pyramid sequence.
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Lesson 4 – Play a game of simple touch
Some call it tag. Some call it catch. We just call it a great way to get learners moving. In this lesson, we start out with a basic game of tag and then move on to simple touch rugby. Enjoy!
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Lesson 5 – Modify and evaluate an existing game
Why break rules when you can make them? Give your class the chance to modify an existing game to be played in Physical Education. The task includes officiating rules, administrative skills and evaluating the game plan of a group of peers.
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Lesson 6 – Wombat ball
Ever heard of wombat ball? It’s a great way to get learners actively thinking about exercise as a preventive tool against lifestyle diseases like obesity and heart disease. Use this lesson to discuss exercise and health and to familiarise learners with the South African Youth Fitness Charter.
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Lesson 7 - School environment
Every week, South African learners spend over 24 hours at school. That’s why it’s so important to make their school environment as healthy as possible. This lesson gets learners thinking about how their school promotes physical activity, and what they can do to improve it.
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Lesson 8 – Frisbee challenge
Who says a Frisbee is only for the beach? Treat your class to a Frisbee challenge, and use the game to show them how adapting the rules can increase participation. Why? Because environmental factors can influence neighbourhood and school-based physical activity. You’ll see it in action.
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Lesson 9 – Why and how we eat
They say you are what you eat, and this is the lesson to prove it. Get the class to reflect on different factors that influence their eating habits, from economic and ecological to social, cultural and even political factors.
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Lesson 10 – Super-sizing South Africa
With childhood obesity on the rise, learners need to pay even closer attention to what they eat and drink. It’s time to discuss how global, social and economic trends affect eating habits, and then devise a strategy for preventing childhood obesity in South Africa. It’s a lesson in food for thought.
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Lesson 1 – Run 2.4km – fitness test
The fitter you are, the further you can run – and vice versa. Set a sweat-worthy fitness assessment for your class and find out who can conquer a challenging 2.4km run.
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Lesson 2 – Introduction to 5km walking/ running six-week programme
Nothing’s quite as motivating as setting a healthy goal – other than achieving it, of course. Introduce your class to a six-week running or walking programme, designed to improve fitness so that each learner can run 5km by the time six weeks are up.
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Lesson 3 - Practise basic volleyball skills
Using this step-by-step lesson plan, learners will work on their confidence and develop their dig shots, set shots and serves (underarm or overarm). They’ll also play an active role in a volleyball rally.
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Lesson 4 – Introduction to orienteering – theory
Whether you’re on a treasure hunt or a hiking expedition, orienteering certainly comes in handy. In this lesson, we define the sport and its military origins, explain the benefits and learn how to understand and interpret an orienteering map.
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Lesson 5 – Introduction to orienteering – practical
It’s time to put the theory from Lesson 4 into practice. How? By teaching learners to navigate with a compass, estimate distance and then actively pace distance in the field.
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Lesson 1 – Participate in a fitness assessment
If you want to know how fit you are, you need to consider five health-related factors. Get each learner to assess his or her own fitness level in this upbeat and interactive session.
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Lesson 2 – Discussion around strategies for improving fitness
How active do you need to be to stay healthy? What’s the difference between moderate and vigorous-intensity exercise? It’s time to discuss the details. By the end of the lesson, learners should be able to list the five components of a fitness test, identify their strengths and weaknesses from their own fitness assessments done in Lesson 1 and draw up a programme to improve their fitness levels by the end of term.
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Lesson 3 – Play modified ten-pin bowling
It’s amazing how much fun you can have with a ball and 10 two-litre bottles. Don’t believe it? Try it. Challenge learners to bowl over as many bottles as they can. In the process, they’ll learn how to accurately throw a ball and how the ten-pin bowling scoring works.
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Lesson 4 – Play modified handball
Think quick! This lesson is all about balance and coordination. It shows learners how to accurately and effectively pass a ball using a number of styles and how to catch one with confidence and precision.
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Lesson 5 – Participate in a route orienteering
Orienteering is usually reserved for rough country and tough terrain. But navigating a school can be challenging enough, which is why this lesson tasks learners to use a map and a compass to navigate a school-based orienteering course.
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Lesson 1 – Participate in an exercise circuit
Every day, the heart beats over 100 000 times and the lungs take more than 20 000 breaths. This lesson will give learners’ hearts and lungs a healthy boost. How? By using a series of rhythmical exercises that improve aerobic endurance or the ability of the heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to the muscles.
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Lesson 2 – Play rounders (focus on fielding)
Catching a ball may sound simple enough, but getting it right every time requires practice. By the end of this lesson, learners should be able to accurately throw a tennis ball, catch on the left or the right of their bodies, stop a rolling ball and pick it up and release it quickly between rounders bases.
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Lesson 3 – Play a game of French cricket
This lesson is designed to teach learners four things: 1) to accurately throw a tennis ball underarm and hit a target, namely the legs of the batsman, 2) to hit a tennis ball as far as possible with control, 3) to defend their wicket, or their legs, and 4) to have fun outdoors with their friends.
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Lesson 4 – Planning a route for competition
When it comes to orienteering, planning is essential. Use this lesson to teach learners how to accurately calculate distance and bearing on a map, how to decide on the best way to reach a station and how to strategically complete a school-based orienteering course in the shortest possible time.
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Lesson 5 – Participate in an orienteering race day
It’s time for some healthy competition! By the end of this lesson, learners should be able to accurately calculate distance and bearing on the ground, follow a map and route notes and complete a school-based orienteering course in the shortest possible time.
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