Strategies for Supporting All Students in Health and Physical Education

In college, I was a dual major focusing on athletic training and physical education. Teaching PE was my back-up plan.

That all changed during my preservice program, which included one adapted PE class. After a day of instruction — and a student with special needs who never left my side — I recognized that teaching was my calling.

I developed a soft spot for students who needed a little extra support that would stay with me throughout my 23 years as an educator.

Addressing Diverse Learning Needs in HPE

It’s not uncommon for teachers, administrators and district leaders to develop extensive improvement plans to close the opportunity gap for various demographic groups and dedicate innumerable dollars toward remediation in subjects such as English and math. But these conversations usually do not involve health and physical education.

As part of my graduate studies, I decided to examine data for our content area and was shocked by what I saw. Students with special education needs were at an increased risk of failing health and physical education when compared to their general education peers.

I grappled with this for a while because we take it for granted that student needs are accounted for in a movement-based class. Yet, it became increasingly clear that the diverse learning needs of all students needed to be addressed in health and physical education as well.

Our district’s Professional Learning Community (PLC) was the perfect place to learn the strategies that could be put into practice.

High-Leverage Practices for Greatest Impact

Our PLC chose to partner with the district’s Division of Specialized Instruction to implement high-leverage practices into our health and physical education classes. The Council for Exceptional Children has organized these practices into four domains, which can be used by educators to support all students.

We focused on the four practices we believed would have the greatest impact for our teachers and students:

• HLP 12: Systematically Design Instruction Toward a Specific Learning Goal
• HLP 13: Adapt Curriculum Tasks and Materials for Specific Learning Goals
• HLP 15: Provide Scaffolded Supports
• HLP 18: Use Strategies to Promote Student Engagement Explicit Instruction

Specific Strategies for Physical Education

Once we analyzed the high-leverage practices, we explored how this would look in a physical education classroom. These became our considerations for health and physical education.

• Visuals (videos, images and demonstrations of skills): We have started to build a library of images and videos for easy access and often use icons and images we find online to help increase understanding for visual learners and language learners.
• Cue words: Elementary school teachers do an excellent job of using short, focus phrases (e.g., T, L, step, twist, throw) to break down skills, and it is something that can improve student outcomes for secondary students as well. We have also incorporated the health skill cues (e.g., DECIDE, I APPEAR.) into our health curriculum.
• Chunking: It’s helpful to break down complex skills and strategies into chunks of information that you build upon. We often see this when teaching dance steps:
  • A
  • B
  • A+B
  • C
  • A+B+C
• Multiple practice opportunities: Students become more proficient at health and physical education skills when they have multiple practice opportunities. As such, lessons must allow students to practice their skills again and again. This can be done by increasing the amount of equipment or decreasing the number of participants in each group. Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Health Education provides excellent ideas for increasing practice opportunities in health classes.
• Adaptations (e.g., rules, equipment): Sometimes the existing rules do not allow students to experience success. When this is the case, it is okay to adapt the rules or equipment for them. Does Samah have limited upper body strength? Then move the throwing target closer so she can still use good form. Does Dani get nervous when she speaks in front of the class? Perhaps she can record her advocacy project, so she still gets a chance to use facts and evidence to support a health claim.

Impact of High-Leverage Practices in PE

When asked which strategies they were using with their students, our teachers had a lot to say:

“Creating short cues, modifying equipment.”

“Explicit instruction, having an adaptive option within the lesson, use more visuals for learners.”

“Thinking through the standard in order to purposely plan for diverse learners; making sure to check for Visual, Audible, Incremental, and continuous cues and chunking to ensure I’m breaking down the skill into concise cues.”

In addition to hearing the strategies, it was exciting to see teachers develop activities where they put these strategies into practice. It was evident that teachers improved their comfort and ability to meet the needs of all learners.

I would gladly place that student from many years ago in the classroom of any of these teachers.

Learn More at #SHAPEBaltimore

If you found value in the information above, be sure to attend my session at the 2025 SHAPE America National Convention & Expo in Baltimore! In Universal Design for Learning: Supporting the Needs of Diverse Learners in HPE, we’ll explore a variety of high leverage practices and Universal Design for Learning strategies to address the diverse needs of all learners in health and physical education. I hope to see you there!

Additional Resources

• 2025 SHAPE America National Convention & Expo
• High-Leverage Practices for Students With Disabilities

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