This is my tenth year teaching Physical Education (PE) at Rigler Elementary School, a bilingual Spanish/English school in the Portland Public Schools district. As the Rigler PE teacher, I have developed a holistic physical education program for kindergarten through fifth grade students. Children at Rigler Elementary receive PE twice a week for 45 minutes per class. Each student achieves PE learning standards through two PE spaces: The more traditional space of a gymnasium, and the unique space of an on-campus yoga studio, a mat-filled classroom kitty-corner to the gym.

How Can P.E. Standards be Taught Through Yoga?

The Rigler PE program is the only yoga program I am aware of that offers yoga on a weekly basis from kindergarten through fifth grade. But what about PE standards? Do we have enough time to cover the hundreds of learning targets set for PE by the State of Oregon? Indeed we do, because I apply dozens of the standards in yoga classes.

Here are a few examples of how I do that:

–I teach the vertical and horizontal jumping standards during our Dinosaur Yoga week. We practice jumping and landing without losing our balance while discussing Velociraptors, those notorious jumpers of the Jurassic Age. We loop back to jumping during our jump rope unit in the gym.

–The health-related benefits of fitness (such as flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular endurance) are identified for different yoga poses, and third through fifth grade students create their own yoga sequences to achieve different health benefits.

–Balance standards are visited in every yoga class, as we practice balancing in tree, airplane, and many other yoga poses.

–Dance standards are taught through our near-weekly celebration game, Yoga Freeze Dance, in which we try on different dance moves created by classmates. 

For an effective yoga program, I recommend posting and reviewing explicit learning targets that students then self-assess themselves on at the end of class. It’s also important to give students multiple chances to experience success, so we rarely cover a standard only once, but rather loop back to the same ideas and skills time and time again in both the gym and the yoga studio.

As a professional, I keep us on track with a spreadsheet I use to check off each learning target as we progress throughout the year.

Inside-Out Physical Education: PE for the Whole Child

Beyond the state-mandated PE learning targets, Rigler students have the chance to develop inner awareness, proprioception, self-control, and many other skills built into yoga practice. When they arrive in kindergarten, my students are wriggly, adorable, and all over the place with their attention. For the first three years, through second grade, we practice yoga with an imaginative, playful approach, using what I call “Yoga Adventures.” Repetition, rhyming, and call-and-response are some of the teaching techniques I use to give students confidence in their yoga abilities. 

In third grade, students begin to transition into more adult-style yoga practices. They add more yoga sequences beyond the simple Sun Dance (a variation on sun salutations) that they have been practicing since kindergarten. They do more partner work and take greater responsibility for creating sequences and choosing our class themes. They have more chances to follow unique yoga flows.

By fourth and fifth grade, students are selecting which yoga styles they would like to study for the year. This year’s fourth graders, for instance, are studying a practice that combines Vinyasa Yoga and Hot Yoga poses. (I can’t heat the classroom, of course, nor would I want to for this age group.) They find the opportunity to practice “real yoga” compelling and enjoy a good challenge.

Overall, I think of the Rigler program as Inside-Out PE, because the yoga classes develop their ability to understand their internal experiences, and the traditional PE classes give students the confidence to pursue traditional sports and physical activities in middle school, high school, and beyond.