What’s up PE Friends!
Today I wanted to go over a fun and super easy to implement school wide challenge that you can try out in your PE classes.
A while back, you might have seen the video I made explaining how I do the Fastest Class Challenge as a fun warmup activity for my students.
This is a great instant activity for PE Class because it’s a quick and easy way to motivate students and has lots of great discussion opportunities as well about goal setting and perseverance.
Check out the video below to see how I run The Fastest Class Challenge at my school:
Links from the Video:
- The Counting Clicker I use in the video
- Wall Mount iPad Holder from the video
- Google Doc for Lap Tracking Each Class
- 5 Minute Countdown Timer Video I project on the TV
- Fire and Ice Tag – Noodle Dance Tag
- Here’s a link to the trophy I got (I ordered the 14.5″ version)
You can check out an older video I made the first time I tried this activity below:
Links from the Video:
- The Counting Clicker I use in the video
- Wall Mount iPad Holder from the video
- Google Doc for Lap Tracking Each Class
After trying the challenge out and seeing how well it worked, I wanted to incorporate into my program a few times a year and track each classes average time in order to set some goals for improvement and discuss perseverance with my students (check out the insta post below for an example)
So this year I decided to run the challenge 3 times throughout the year. Once at the end of each of the first 3 nine week quarters of our school year.
So I ran the challenge at the end of Q1, Q2 and Q3 and after each homeroom had run the challenge I announced the “Fastest Class in the School” for each grade level and the overall winner.
You can get as creative as you want with this activity, but below are a few incentives that I did with my students:
The Fastest Class Trophy
I chose to have a trophy made that I got from Amazon that said “Fastest Class in the School” and award it to each class to keep in their classroom until the next challenge when the trophy would go back up for grabs again.
Here’s a link to the trophy I got (I ordered the 14.5″ version)
The Fastest Class Poster
I also took class pictures of each grade level winner and printed them to go on a poster that I designed and posted outside of my gym door. Every class gets to look at the poster on their way into the gym each week, so it’s major cool points to get your class up there.
Activity Reward
I rewarded each of the winners with 10 minutes of their favorite tag game at the end of their next PE class. This was easy to implement and required basically no setup, but was super motivating for students.
- If you’re looking for a fun no setup activity check out Noodle Dance Tag or Fire and Ice Tag
That’s it!
I hope you got something out of this post and if you haven’t tried something similar, give it a shot.
We also created some cool certificates for our membership and our TPT store to go along with this activity, you can check them out here if you want.
If you want to download the Activity Guide and Free Poster mentioned in the video, you can do so below:
Sarah says
Hello!
What do you do if class sizes are different? I have a 2nd grade class with 19, another 2nd grade class with 22. So the class with 22 will most likely win…? I want to implement this in some way, I might do the average laps so that it’s “fair”. Any feedback or tips is appreciated.
Thank you!
Marcus says
Hey Sarah!
Great question!
We take the average laps of each class so we take the laps they make and divide it by the number of students.
This allows us to keep the challenge as far as possible.
Check out the videos in the post for more details!
Cheryl says
Hey Ben, I love this idea, but when I tried it I ended up with every kid in class lined up at the ipad? I wonder what I did wrong? Thoughts?
Brad says
Thanks for sharing! I started the FCC last year at my school. The students absolutely love it! We announce the winner of each grade level and an overall school winner!
Marcus says
So cool Brad!
Thanks for sharing!
James says
I love this activity. I use it. I use it one time a year for about 8 weeks straight. My kids love it but they get tired of it.
If you do it 3 Xs a year, how long do you do it for?
Marcus says
Hey James,
We do the challenge for 5 minutes
Lukas Feldpausch says
Hello, I found this website and blog to be super helpful. I think this is a great idea and could be really effective with my 6th and 7th graders. I appreciate the information. Thank you
Marcus says
You’re welcome Lukas!
Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
Caleb Bloomquist says
I really liked the idea of having a competition amongst all the classes! As a Physical Education major, I am constantly looking for things to add to my tool box to become a more effective PE teacher!
Marcus says
So awesome Caleb!
Students love the challenge and it is a great activity for increasing cardiovascular endurance!
StephanieL. says
Do you have a document with your words of the week? I love this idea.
Marcus says
Hey Stephanie,
You can check out all of our posters and visuals at the post below:
https://www.thepespecialist.com/pepostertour/
Hope this helps!
Jim Rumbold says
the FCC is a fantastic activity but 5:00 is a long time. I see pros and cons, and to reduce the cons , I think I would start at 3: 00 in the fall and be up to 5:00 by May ( maybe more 😉 ). My gym is small, lap times are between 18sec and 23sec for our standard warmup of 4 laps
Marcus says
Totally understand Jim! Take the activity and modify it to your situation.
Students love the Fastest Class Challenge!
Elliott Pattison says
First off I have loved the membership and have found many of your posts and resources incredibly helpful. I am a new PE teacher having previously been in the GenEd classroom for 7 years. Thank you so much for all of this amazing work. I have a number of questions that I’m going to drop here and hope you can help me out. While reading through this post I saw that you mentioned 1st-5th. Do you not have kinder in your school? If you do, do you build them up to this activity for next year? How often do your younger grades become the fastest class?
Thanks again for all your help, it is greatly appreciated.
Marcus says
Hey Elliot,
Thanks for reaching out! Glad you’re enjoying the resources!
We do have Kindergarteners, we just don’t usually have them try the challenge. We practice locomotors and partner PACER test to build their cardiovascular endurance.
Tips on how we teach the PACER Test are below:
https://www.thepespecialist.com/pacertest/
It just depends on students some younger classes really have that stamina to compete!
Jaime Koch says
I am trying to download the Activity Guide and Free Poster mentioned in the video for the fastest class challenge and it will not download for me. Can you email me it?
Jaime Koch says
Never mind, my work computer finally was able to download it. Look forward to trying this! Thanks for sharing
Marcus Nellems says
Glad you were able to get the download to work for you! Feel free to reach out with any more questions or concerns!
Chad says
Hey, what grades levels do you do the fastest class challenge with?
Would kindergarten be able to handle it?
Ben Landers says
Hey Chad – I only do it with 1st – 5th. My K kiddos are kind of off on their own learning the basics of pretty much everything. They could probably do it, but I’d rather just wait until 1st grade. It all depends on your kids and personal situation though, so try it out and see what works.
Tami says
I am going to do this activity next week. Do you have any suggestions for large class sizes in a small gym? I see the students twice a week for 30 minutes.
Ben Landers says
Just give the safety talk up front and remind them to be careful when passing people or stopping on for a walk/break.
Tami says
Great!
Thanks!
Jackie Hall West says
I have used the Fastest Class Challenge for the past year…I do monthly, but classes only run for 3 minutes, then I make a poster for them to hang outside their classroom. I have found that in doing this, as a class, ALL students are taking pride in helping their class out. I try to make my posters seasonal, for example, October…I have a running Pumpkin, November a Running Turkey, December a running Santa etc….Last year, I had one class whose goal was to earn the Fastest Class Challenge each month….they accomplished that goal! They had to step up on some months, when they had classmates absent…it was good to see them working towards a common goal, with ALL students involved.
Ben Landers says
That’s awesome – love the idea of the poster each month, very cool!