Organization of the Lesson

If you were to be an observer in my classroom for the Wii Tennis lesson here is a description of what you would observe.  The students would walk in to the gym and sit silently on their squad for attendance.  At one end of the gym a projector and the Wii would be set up on a cart with the controllers on the middle shelf of the cart.  There are also two smaller televisions at the other end of the gym so two more games can be played.  After attendance each student will begin the warm up activity.  The students will run or job around the gym for 3 minutes.  After the 3 minutes, the students will do a dynamic warm up which includes lunges, grapevine, side lunges, high knees, butt kicks, and toe touches.  After the warm up the students will each grab a controller and disperse to their designated station.  We have started the tournament and the doubles teams are playing.  We get right into play and consult the brackets; I have a schedule of who is playing first and on which “court”.  As the games begin I walk around the gym watching each game and making sure everything is running smoothly.  The students who are not playing must be at one of the three games observing and cheering on their classmates.  As soon as a game is done, the team that won marks their score on the bracket poster and the next game begins.  The students will reset the game on the Wii console and make sure everyone is ready to play.  As the transitions are happening I am making sure the scores are being reported accurately and also that the transition to the next game is happening quickly.  While playing doubles it is important to communicate with your partner, so you will also hear a lot of conversations during the games.  The observer will see a lot of movement during the class period.  The observer will also hear conversations between the players and between the teacher and the students.  I hope the observer will feel astonishment that the students can be physically active with technology. 

            The lesson will be taught over the course of two weeks.  The first week will focus on familiarizing the students with the Wii and the details of the controller and the game of Wii tennis.  The second week will focus on the tournament and playing matches.  Each class period will start off the same but depending on the class the speed of the lesson can be adjusted.  If one class is ready for the tournament after day 3, then we will start the tournament early.     

            There will be no help needed for the technology because the Wii is fairly easy to work with.  If a problem does occur, the Wii website is very informative and is very helpful at operational issues.  Students with special needs can be involved with little to no modifications made.  As I mentioned before, students with limited physical abilities can participate fully and be very successful.  There will be no special help required for this lesson but I would welcome anyone who wanted to help.