This is a study of management of physical education at extremely small schools, which have multi-grade three classes, with eight to twenty-five students, and with four to six teachers including a principal and an assistant principal. The characteristic of a multi-grade class is that it has students of different grades involved in one classroom, whose difficult issue is that there exist individual differences between grades. In case of teaching Japanese language, arithmatic, or social studies, the students are taught to one grade face to face, while the rest of the students in other grades are obliged to do self-teaching. It is well understood that, in the field of physical education, there exist some common teaching issues between multi-grade classes and regular classes in terms of goals, contents and process of study, all of which are based on the existence of difference between students, However, in case of extremely small-size schools, although we admit some individual differences among the students, the school itself is so small that the question is that how well study groups are formed in which they are exposed to the specificies of each physical exercise. When teaching is carried out in multi-grade classes, it will have to be done either in lower grades group, or middle grades group or higher grades group. Each group will require its own teaching contents. The school size was reflected in the making of its annual schedule; in some schools it was made by the health and physical education senior teacher, while in other schools by department members together, Generally, in extremely small schools or small schools in isolated areas, health and physical education senior teachers are in charge of the schedule, and in bigger schools in urban areas the department members all commit. Those units the schedule of small schools are tended to be smaller and fewer than those in bigger schools in urban areas. Particularly, in the learning of ball games, the teachers themselves enjoyed their own teaching method in the twenty-two regular schools in urban areas. In the twenty-three extremely small schools and small schools in isolated areas, even those individual type sports like swimming, skiing and track and field were taught in a team-teaching system. In case when it is impossible to form a team, as in the field of ball games, it will be required to study a way of activities in corporation with neighboring schools. It will be important for senior teachers themselves to be cooperative among those neigboring schools, but the establishment of teaching system with principal, assistant principal and senior teachers all invloved will be more urgent. The author, from the management standpoint of physical education, proposed a new cooperative teaching system which involves neighboring schools as cooperative members.
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