Abstract
The present study aimed to develop and test a teaching plan for tag rugby, which is a new type of ball sport for elementary school physical education classes. The teaching plan consisted of nine 1-hour activities, including mathematical and computational thinking and a combination of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), in order to improve the students' ability to recognize and judge each phase of the game's tactics from various angles. The participants in the test of the plan were 52 students in two 5th-grade classes at one public elementary school in Tokyo. The students' life skills and tag rugby performance, their attitude toward education and sports, and their ability to express emotions and understand problems were measured. Significant improvement was found in life skills and tag rugby performance, such as the number of tags made and passes (p<0.01), as well as the students' problem solving ability and ability to form personal relationships (p<0.05). This new teaching plan for physical education, which was developed using a programming style of thinking, meets the current elementary school curriculum guidelines from the Ministry of Education.
