P6-7 Enjoy Orienteering for PE

This term, P6 and P7 are participating in Orienteering as part of their PE curriculum.

The children work in groups of two or three and race against the clock to complete the course as quickly as possible.

So far, the children have had 20 Orienteering Control Cards to visit in numerical order. (Although each group starts at a different number to prevent a stampede all going in one direction.) Attached to the back of each control card is a true or false question. The children read the question and run back to their teammate(s) with the answer. Answers are recorded on their score sheet. The next person then goes until they have been to every control card.

The first Orienteering course was based on sports questions (darts to gymnastics, football to squash, golf to Formula 1 you name it). The second course was all about Climate Change to encourage pupils to think about what they can do to help our planet and understand the consequences of our actions.

When all of the groups have complete the course, we go over the answers. For every wrong answer recorded, the group add five seconds to their finishing time. This can lead to some teams dropping down a few places, e.g. from fourth to sixth, whilst some improve their finishing position.

Going forward, the Orienteering courses are going to be a bit more tricky. Each control card will state which one they have to find next (they won’t be able to progress through the course until they find that particular one) and there will be almost double the number to find.

An Orienteering score board is going up in the gym so the pupils can track how they are getting on. The pupils are very keen to beat other class’ times or retain their position from week to the next.