Movement is the medium through which all students at Midway Elementary School learn to manage their bodies efficiently and effectively in physical education.    Lessons are designed to encourage children to be participants, not spectators, with the hope that this attitude would have carry-over value into their adult lives.

The curriculum is basically divided into three major areas: games, educational dance, and educational gymnastics. All three areas overlap in a variety of ways with a common movement vocabulary and common movement concepts tying them together. The health-related components of physical fitness are also common threads running through the three divisions.

The children define and refine the basic locomotor and non-locomotor movements which are the "building blocks" for all skills taught at Midway. The children are exposed to invariant game skill experiences that relate to a variety of sports (throwing, catching, striking, dodging, dribbling, kicking, etc.) The ultimate goal in the games division of the curriculum is that a child be able to engage in a self-created or teacher-created game with minimal adult intervention.

In educational dance, the children learn:

1. to use their bodies as instruments of expression
2. to interpret and move to different rhythms
3. to enjoy and appreciate dance
4. where the body can move (spatial awareness)
5. how the body moves
6. to work alone, with a partner, in a small group, or as a whole class

Educational gymnastics is divided into floor experiences and apparatus experiences. The children learn how to manage and control their bodies efficiently and effectively as they practice skills that involve jumping and landing, rolling, balancing, and the transfer of weight. A child is never expected to execute a skill or perform a movement just like another child in educational gymnastics.

Children come to the physical education class with a tremendous range of previous movement experiences. Therefore, it is not our goal to have every student within a class operating on the same proficiency level. Rather, it is our goal to challenge each child to move from his current level of proficiency to the next.