Physical education and wellness

We listened to all feedback from classroom piloting and engagement activities and heard these common concerns across all draft K to grade 6 subjects:

• Load
  • some content is too heavy within a subject, grade or learning outcome
• Age-appropriateness
  • some knowledge, understandings, and skills/procedures need to be better aligned with students’ developmental level in a specific grade
  • more pre-requisite learning is needed to support the knowledge, understandings and skills/procedures
• Wording clarity
  • clearer expectations and verb choice are needed in some content for students to achieve learning outcomes
  • clearer descriptions are needed for some knowledge, understandings or skills/procedures
• First Nations, Métis and Inuit content
  • additional content is needed to support First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives
  • some content needs to represent First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives and contributions more authentically

The feedback on draft K to 6 physical education and wellness curriculum offered suggestions related to physical literacy, physical fitness, mental health, human reproduction, puberty, safety, consent and nutrition.

We heard the content needed updates to:

• emphasize physical literacy and opportunities for students to engage in a broad range of movement experiences
• eliminate physical fitness goal setting and focus on the joy of movement and developing various components of physical fitness across all grade levels
• strengthen the connection between physical activity and mental health, and address mental health across grade levels
• clarify language to support knowledge an understanding of human reproduction and puberty
• include more knowledge and understanding about substance safety across grade levels
• reflect an individual’s obligation and legal responsibility to ask for and obtain consent, and respect when consent is not given
• emphasize positive experiences with food and support foundational understanding of food and nutrition
• support diversity and inclusion and create an environment of belonging for all students

In April 2022, we finalized new K to 6 physical education and wellness curriculum by updating the draft curriculum from March 2021. In addition to making changes that reflect engagement and piloting feedback, we also aligned the new curriculum with top-performing jurisdictions, both within Canada and internationally, as well as those with knowledge-rich curriculums.

We made the following content updates to address:

• Load: Refined examples and redistributed content across multiple grades while considering age-appropriateness.
• Age-appropriateness: Shifted content between K to 6 grades or into grades 7 to 12.
• Wording clarity: Analyzed and aligned verbs in learning outcomes to Bloom’s Taxonomy to ensure the higher-level verbs are used in all K to 6 grades, and/or edited for clear and correct language use.
• First Nations, Métis, and Inuit content: Made updates based on feedback from stakeholder groups and jurisdictional scans.
• Physical literacy: Revised content to use active verbs and emphasize physical literacy and opportunities for students to engage in a broad range of movement experiences.
• Physical fitness: Revised content across all grade levels to focus on the joy of movement and developing various components of physical fitness, eliminating content related to physical fitness goal setting and revising content to emphasize participation in a variety of physical activities.
• Mental health: Revised and added content to strengthen the connection between physical activity and mental health, self-regulation strategies and understanding, as well as naming and learning about feelings, emotions and sources of support.
• Human reproduction and puberty: Revised and added content to ensure students understand puberty, changes to the body and human reproduction.
• Safety: Added and revised content to include more knowledge about substance safety, unsafe and uncomfortable situations, risk-taking and digital citizenship.
• Consent: Added or revised content across all K to 6 grades to ensure students know that individuals have a responsibility to ask for and obtain permission and consent, and respect when consent is denied.
• Nutrition: Revised content to emphasize the nutritional value of foods, support positive food experiences and build foundational understanding of food and nutrition.