Portals is a health and fitness game in which students hold hula hoops upright to build gateways that runners must leap through in a race to grab the key. Expect quick reactions, all-out sprints, and hearts pounding fast.
Divide your class into six teams, one per rainbow colour.
Students sit in a large circle in the centre of the playing area, in a rainbow pattern.
A hula hoop is placed on the floor between each pair of students, and the hoops follow the same rainbow pattern around the circle.
Leave a clear running lane around the outside of the circle.
Be the first runner to travel through a portal and grab the key from the middle of the circle.
Students hold the hoops with a loose grip and let go if a runner catches the hoop while passing through.
Seated students keep their legs crossed and tucked in to keep the running lane clear.
Runners keep their heads up and their eyes forward, especially as they converge on the key in the middle of the circle.
Teach students to grab the key and lift it rather than pulling on it.
At the key, teach "grab and hold it up" instead of "grab and pull." If two hands land at the same time, celebrate both.
Hand this to a sub and walk away. Printable pages for every build, diagrams, discussion questions, teacher notes, and assessment ideas. All in one ready-to-print package so there's no sub plan to write.
#PhysEdU Plus includes instant access to every printable game sheet in ThePhysicalEducator.com's games database. $49 a year.
Builds allow you to increase the game's complexity, one layer at a time.
Students sit in the circle in their rainbow groups with the hoops resting flat on the floor between them. No portals and no key yet.
The teacher calls out a colour. The students in that colour group get up quickly, race around the outside of the circle in a counterclockwise direction, and try to get back to their spot before the rest of their group.
This build serves as your warm-up, teaches the formation, and locks in the running direction before anything else gets added.
Call the colours in an unpredictable order and call some groups twice. Students should never be able to guess when their turn is coming, which keeps everyone alert and ready.
Add the key to the middle of the circle and have students lift the hoops upright to create the portals. One colour group starts as the runners, with their hoops removed and the gaps closed.
Runners jog around the outside of the circle. When the teacher calls "GET THE KEY!", each runner hops through the nearest portal, races to the middle, and tries to grab the key first. A new group becomes the runners and the next round begins.
Same setup as Build Two, except now there are six keys in the middle of the circle, one in each colour of the rainbow.
The teacher now calls "GET THE [COLOUR] KEY!", naming one specific colour.
Runners must continue in the direction they are already travelling, find the closest portal of that colour without turning around, hop through it, and grab the key of that colour.
The no-turning-around rule is the whole point of this build. It forces students to scan ahead and commit, which means a runner who has just passed the purple portal has to cover almost a full lap to get back to it.
Print the game sheet, leave it on your desk, and your sub has everything they need: the diagrams, the builds in order, what to say, and what to watch for. This one is $4. #PhysEdU Plus members get all 39, free forever, for $49 a year.
Games that build on the same tactics.
