Red Team vs. Blue Team

Grouping strategies are an important tool for every teacher. When individual and group practice have run their course and it is time to play a sport in a PE class, a far stronger kind of grouping strategy becomes available to PE instructors: the formation of teams. When a teacher takes it upon himself to create teams, he has a wide range of possible outcomes and creates teachable moments. Effective team creation helps an instructor teach related concepts like teamwork, sportsmanship, and gamesmanship. Once a teacher takes responsibility for creating teams, a world of teaching opportunities open.

Consider Your Desired or Expected Outcomes 

You have spent many classes teaching the fundamentals of a sport, slowly training your students up to a level where you think they could play a game. How do you want that game to go? Do you want to make the game competitive? Do you want to make sure that students at every ability level are able to contribute meaningfully to their team? If you want nothing more than two teams that will play for an entire class period, then divide your class down the middle and you are ready to go! Otherwise, here are some simple strategies to create more specific outcomes:

• If you have been paying close attention to the abilities and progress of your students throughout individual and group practice classes, you can make teams on paper as part of your lesson preparation. This usually takes a significant amount of time, but it can be worth it to make evenly matched teams and to group those who work well together.
• If expediency is necessary, have individuals pair up with someone they think is roughly the same skill level as themselves and have all the pairs face each other across a line. The line should be splitting your class in half, giving you two teams of approximately equal skill level.
• Maybe you have a large number of advanced players and beginners with a significant gulf in between. Consider breaking your class into four teams for two simultaneous games, one for beginners and one for more advanced players. If you do not tell them this is what you are doing, they may not even notice.

Who Says Teams Must Be Static?

Remember that, no matter the situation, you always have control over team composition. If a game is not as competitive as you wish, move some players around. This can be accomplished easily by blowing your whistle and announcing that you are switching a player to another team.

There are also ways to give players more control. After a point is scored against a team, announce that that team will be allowed to steal a player from the team that just scored. When they have decided who they want to steal, ask if one of them will volunteer to take that player’s place. There is almost always a willing volunteer, and this saves you from the possibility of players trying to exclude others from their team.

Experiment to Find What Suits You and Your Class

You may find that what works well for one class does not work at all for another. Experiment with as many of these strategies as you feel comfortable with trying and see how your students react. Some classes will not take well to players being traded mid-game and you will have to try a different strategy. Other classes may not mind trading players, but will do a poor job of pairing up effectively to make even teams.

Regardless of what you try, make certain that your players are up to the task of being on a team. Team building exercises, such as those outlined here, are a good way to introduce your young athletes to being a part of a team. If you are having a problem with players getting too competitive or not being inclusive here is a good lesson on how these issues affect athletes at the very highest level. If you want to test some of these strategies before doing all of the lead up lessons to a full sport, find something that can be taught quickly and that will get the class playing fast, such as this team handball game.

Once they are used to working together and supporting one another, your students will make better teammates in competitive games where your team grouping strategies can have the greatest effect.