Uruguay Physical Education and Recreation (Educación Física y Recreación) - 9th Grade (Tramo 6)

This curriculum focuses on developing well-rounded individuals through physical activity, emphasizing not just physical skills, but also emotional, cognitive, and social development. It promotes a healthy lifestyle, encourages critical thinking, and fosters an appreciation for diverse cultural expressions. The curriculum is structured around specific competencies, content areas, and cross-curricular themes.

Competencies

The curriculum aims to develop four specific competencies:

• Motor Competency (Competencia Motriz): Students develop reflective, emotional, and observable motor skills promoting a healthy lifestyle through sports, games, recreation, gymnastics, and expressive movement. This competency contributes to the development of communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, metacognition, intrapersonal skills, relationships with others, initiative, and action-oriented behavior.
• Corporeality and Environment Competency (Competencia Corporeidad y entorno): Students recognize and develop their body schema, perceptual notions (motor and affective), conditional and coordinative capacities, generating processes of internalization, decision, and execution with spatiotemporal notion to respond to different situations in their environment. This contributes to communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, metacognition, and computational thinking.
• Expressive Motor Competency (Competencia Motriz expresiva): Students explore, analyze, and develop corporeality to communicate, express, create, and generate assertive decision-making individually and with others. This contributes to communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, metacognition, relationships with others, initiative, and action-oriented behavior.
• Body and Scientific Thought Competency (Competencia Cuerpo y pensamiento cientifico): Students build scientific knowledge to develop, question, argue, and investigate physical education concepts, leading to informed decision-making. This contributes to communication, creative thinking, scientific thinking, metacognition, intrapersonal skills, initiative, action-oriented behavior, and local, global, and digital citizenship.

Content Areas

The curriculum is built around five core content areas:

• Body Awareness (Conciencia corporal): Understanding and perceiving one's own body, including physical sensations, emotions, and internal processes.
• Sports (Deporte): Learning various sports, focusing on technical aspects, tactical intentions, regulations, and modes of competition, as well as the broader social and cultural aspects of sports.
• Gymnastics (Gimnasia): Developing physical abilities through systematic exercises and techniques, including artistic and aerobic choreography, while emphasizing self-care and awareness of muscular tone.
• Play and Recreation (Juego y recreación): Engaging in playful activities and recreational pursuits, understanding the cultural and historical significance of games, and promoting the use of free time for personal development.
• Expressive Practices (Prácticas expresivas): Using movement to communicate, express emotions, and create, fostering self-knowledge, respect, self-esteem, and empathy.

Cross-Curricular Themes

Three cross-curricular themes further enrich the learning experience:

• Physical Education and Health (Educación Física y salud)
• Physical Education, Society, and Culture (Educación Física, sociedad y cultura)
• Technology and Physical Education (Tecnología y Educación Física)

9th Grade Specific Content and Evaluation

In 9th grade, the curriculum delves into specific topics within each content area. For example, in Body Awareness, students analyze the locomotor system and its functionality, connect it to sports and recreational programs, and reflect on ethical implications of social media use. In Play and Recreation, they explore games in natural environments, plan and evaluate camping trips, and consider games in aquatic settings. Evaluation is based on achieving specific learning outcomes within each competency, using a variety of assessment tools such as checklists, anecdotal records, project development, and presentations. The curriculum emphasizes authentic assessment, focusing on real-world application of knowledge and skills.