Game Sense is a teaching approach for physical education that focuses on the game as a whole rather than isolated skills or drills. It emphasizes allowing students to develop skills within the context of a game in order to practice them cohesively. Studies show Game Sense is more popular than traditional coaching methods as it shifts the focus from the coach to the game. When used in the classroom, Game Sense involves students playing games together as a team rather than working individually on basic skills. This allows students to develop and apply skills in a more engaging way within the context of a game. Game Sense addresses multiple curriculum outcomes related to games and sports, as well as communication, decision making, movement, and problem solving.

1. Game Sense
Using the Game Sense Approach in the primary school
classroom

2. What is Game Sense?
• Game sense is a relatively new concept and teaching approach
and refers to a focus on a game (or the big picture) rather than on
technique or practice and drills (Towns, 2002; Pill, 2016). While
working on technique and practice are still deemed imperative to
success, working on them in isolation does little to assist our
students in developing cohesive skills and play. Students are not
given the opportunity to develop their play as its practice becomes
routine and its application is not practiced thoroughly (Light,
2004).

3. What is Game Sense?
• Studies show that although “Game Sense” is vastly different from
usual training methods such as directive, technique focused
approaches, it has proven to be a popular method of coaching and
development in a number of fields as it brings forth the concept of
a game centred practice rather than a coach-centred practice.

4. Using Game Sense as a
Teaching Approach
• The studies show that through using game sense as a teaching
approach, students are exposed to a new focus in training
sessions. Through the use of this approach, coaches and
teachers are able to focus on the happenings of a game and the
play as a whole, rather than the skills that the students would
typically practice in an isolated way. Students no longer focus on
the drills and repetitive nature of training, but are able to practice
by using the ongoing and cohesive nature of a game.

5. Benefits of using Game Sense as
a teaching approach
• Empirical studies show that there are benefits to using Game Sense as a
teaching approach in the classroom, namely for the study of pdhpe.
These benefits include:
- means of moving away from and beyond outdated training approaches
- students have the opportunity to develop conceptions of knowledge
- develop skills that work cohesively rather than isolated
- offers human interaction rather than just transfer of knowledge
- more student focus rather than coach centred

6. How do we use this in the
classroom?
• Game Sense is utilised in the classroom in a number of ways. For
example:
• Throughout PE lessons, students are now more likely to play
games as a class (working together as a team to play a game)
rather than working on their own to develop basic skills such as
jumping, running, hand-eye coordination etc.
• Through Game Sense, students are not only able to develop
such skills in practice, but are able to utilise them in a more
cohesive and engaging way (Kirk & MacPhail, 2002).

7. How does it relate to teaching
the syllabus content?
• By using Game Sense, students fulfil a number of syllabus
content outcomes and descriptors across the many stages of
primary school. It appropriately addresses the Game and Sports
strand as well as successfully encompassing such skills as
communicating, decision making, moving and problem solving.

8. References
• Board of Studies, NSW. (2007). Personal Development, health and
physical education K-6: Syllabus, Sydney, Australia.
• Kirk, D. & MacPhail, A. (2002). Teaching games for understanding and
situated learning: Rethinking the Bunker-Thorpe Model. Journal of
Teaching in physical education, 21(2), pp. 177-193.
• Light, R. (2004). Implementing a Game Sense Approach in Youth Sport
Coaching: Challenges, Change and Resistence, Waikato Journal of
Education, Vol (10), pp. 169-180.
• Towns, J. (2002). About Game Sense, University of Wollongong
(UOW).
• Pill, S. (2016). An appreciative inquiry exploring game sense teaching in
physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 21(2), 279-297.