Hello and welcome to the Daily Phys Ed for Thursday, the 12th of April. My name is Nathan Horne from ifysed.com and this is the Daily Phys Ed podcast, the daily physical education podcast where I share with you reflections on my teaching practice, tips, techniques, strategies, technology, tools, and all other things physical education. Thank you for joining us today for another episode. Today was a very full and busy day for me at Medaridge School here in British Columbia, Canada.
It was day 7 on our 8th day rotation and day 7 is my full, full, full day. They started in assembly and then I teach 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 classes. So I show you 7 classes for the rest of the day. I see some grade 3s, I see some 4s, some 5s, and some 2s.
I see every grade level that I teach today. So very, very busy. Today was a bit of a special day, not for a good reason. For anybody out there who's in Canada and is listening, you'll know that today was a day that a lot of schools and a lot of people all around Canada were wearing jerseys, hockey jerseys in particular, but any jersey, to try and remember and commemorate the tragic loss of the 16 people that lost their lives in the bus crash in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, just last week.
There was a junior hockey team that were travelling to a playoff game and were T-boned by a semi-trailer. And it was just tragic, tragic news for everybody here in Canada, for anybody involved in hockey, but just anybody who is in Canada here. It was just a really tragic event and it's done and it's really touched the entire community, no matter where you are across the country. So one of the things that was done to try and raise awareness or to try and raise funds to help support the families of not only those that died, but those that are still in intensive care and are still going to be suffering the consequences of that tragic accident for a long time to try and raise some funds to them.
I know there's a GoFundMe page up to about $8 million, which is just absolutely unbelievable. But yeah, today was a day where everybody was wearing jerseys to school. So a part of our assembly, we've spoken about that. And then for the rest of the day, it was actually really great to see so many jerseys out there today and to see so many people wearing their jerseys.
And out of a really sad situation, the thing that I took away from today was just the sense of community and the conversation and how everybody, I guess, has a connection to hockey in this country. It's definitely a national sport. It's something that I've recently taken up. But everybody had a story about hockey, whether a game that they'd been to, whether it's the fact that they participate in, being part of a team, knowing somebody who's on a team.
And a variety. There were so many Canucks jerseys there, Vancouver Canucks being the local team here. But there were so many jerseys from other smaller teams all around and people having connections to hockey everywhere. So out of such a sad situation, it was really great to see joy and community building through that situation.
So that really, I guess, was something that dominated the day and there was discussion around that. And there was, I guess, that was the main focus of the day today, was remembering those poor young guys who lost their lives there. But in terms of teaching today, the Grade 3s, we were working on striking fielding games. So we were doing sort of a modified version of kickball.
Grade 4s, we ended up in our smaller dance studio gym because we didn't have space today. So we were doing some dance with them. And then the Grade 5s this afternoon, we were working on some invasion games. Now, with those Grade 5s, one of the things that I did with them was the passing map.
Now, if you've been on the website, arthiz.com, you can download the passing map as part of our game resources and assessment tools. Now, the passing map is a great little assessment tool that I have my students do when they observe a player on another team during an invasion game and they make marks on that passing map to show where the players were when they received the ball and then draw arrows showing where they passed the ball. And that simple way of collecting some data and some visual data, I guess, informs some conversations the students can have with each other, as well as with me, and as well as reflecting upon their own performance. So if you're interested in finding out more about those game maps, you can head on over to the website, arthiz.com, and you can find out more about game maps.
I have written a blog post about it, and then you can download those game maps and those passing maps free of charge from our resources section. So that's what I did with the Grade 5s this afternoon. Now, I didn't get a lot of time to have the students reflect on those, but I did collect them up and will be using them again in another lesson to reflect upon. And I'm thinking about even using the same game map again and using maybe a different colour pencil or pen to have the students so they can compare their performance across a couple of different games.
So if they're looking at, say, the blue marks on the page, as opposed to the green marks, they would see different games and then their performance in different games and what part of the court or the field that they were, I guess, doing a majority of their passing and receiving of the ball. So that was a great 5s and the great 2s this afternoon as well. We were just looking outside the beautiful sunny afternoon here. So we got outside and we were just really active outside on our playground and on our field.
So that was a really fun way to end the day. So for today, I don't want to speak too long. I think I just want to, again, mention all those people out there in Saskatchewan and Hombolt who are struggling right now and hopefully send in our thoughts and our support as I go through a really, really difficult time. And until tomorrow, my name is Nathan Horne from myphysed.com and this has been the Daily Phys Ed Podcast.