Teach your students the difference between a small injury and a serious one with this printable game pack for Hospital Tag, a tag game where first aiders race to get injured players back in!
Most of the tears in my gym come from fear, not from pain.
I teach Primary to Grade Two, and if you've spent any time with those grades you know that every bump arrives with a deluge and every scrape is treated as life-threatening, at least for the first thirty seconds. For a long time I responded the way most of us do. Ice pack, kind words, back you go.
Then I changed the question I was asking. Instead of trying to build a program that was as safe as possible, which is impossible anyway, I started building one that was as safe as necessary, and teaching my students what to do when they do get hurt so that it becomes less frightening.
That starts with one distinction: some injuries are small and some are serious. The difference has nothing to do with how much it hurts. It has to do with who needs to get involved. Scrapes, bumps, bruises and small cuts are things a student can learn to handle. Head injuries, bleeding that won't stop, broken bones and asthma attacks need an adult, immediately.
Hospital Tag is how my students practise telling one from the other while they're moving, playing, and having a very good time.
⛑️ Build One: Hospital Tag. A simple tag game with no way back in. Students get tagged twice and sit down, stuck. They will tell you this is unfair, and that complaint is exactly what you want.
🚑 Build Two: First Aiders. Two or three students become first aiders, wheeling scooter carts to sitting players and getting them back in the game. First aid arrives as the answer to the problem they just named.
🎲 Build Three: Injury Dice. First aiders roll to determine whether the injury is small or serious. Small injuries get treated on the spot. Serious ones get wheeled to the hospital, where the player shares one piece of personal information to be cleared.
The language outlasts the lesson. When a student goes down now, I ask whether it's small or serious, and watching a five-year-old work that out for themselves is watching them take back a bit of control in a moment where they felt they had none.
The pack includes the full game, all three builds with their diagrams, learning targets, discussion questions, assessment ideas, and teacher notes.
Happy Teaching!
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